Company: MCHB
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001518715-25-000026
Chunk: 26

Company: Mechanics Bancorp
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 26
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 and pay dividends to its shareholders. 

Our business is geographically confined to certain metropolitan areas of the Western United States, and events and conditions that disproportionately affect those areas may pose a more pronounced risk for our business.

Although we presently have retail deposit branches in four states, with lending offices in these states and two others, a substantial majority of our revenues are derived from operations in the Puget Sound region of Washington, the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, and the Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside and San Diego metropolitan areas in Southern California. All of our markets are located in the Western United States. Each of our primary markets is subject to various types of natural disasters, including earthquakes, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, mudslides and floods, and many have experienced disproportionately significant economic volatility in the past, as well as more recent local political unrest and calls to action, including calls for rent disruption, when compared to other parts of the United States. Economic events, political unrest or natural disasters that affect the Western United States and our primary markets in that region may have an unusually pronounced impact on our business. Because our operations are not more geographically diversified, we may lack the ability to mitigate those impacts from operations in other regions of the United States.

9

The significant concentration of real estate secured loans in our portfolio has had a negative impact on our asset quality and profitability in the past and it may have such impact in the future.

A substantial portion of our loans are secured by real property, including a portfolio of commercial real estate (“CRE”) loans. Our real estate secured lending is generally sensitive to national, regional and local economic conditions, making loss levels difficult to predict. Declines in real estate sales and prices, significant increases in interest rates, unforeseen natural disasters and a decline in prevailing economic conditions may result in higher than expected loan delinquencies, foreclosures, problem loans, other real estate owned (“OREO”), net charge-offs and provisions for credit and OREO losses. If real estate market values decline significantly, as they did in the 2008 to 2011 recession, the collateral for our loans may provide less security and reduce our ability to recover the principal, interest and costs due on defaulted loans. Such declines may have a greater effect on our earnings and capital than on the earnings and capital of financial institutions whose loan portfolios are more diversified, and as a result, we have faced and we could face in the future reduced liquidity, constraints on capital resources, increased obligations to investors to whom we sell mortgage loans, declining income on