Bonds that are HTM would have been profitable. They just weren't sellable for a profit on the open market (at the time they needed to sell them), because their yield was too low. So, as far as I have read, it wasn't until there was a run that they needed to dramatically increase liquidity. With so much of their holding being HTM, they were stuck. The issue was a mismatch in the timeframes (which was the fatal problem, and should not have happened).

But without that pressure, there probably would have been enough time for this to have been a much more orderly transition. The panic didn't help anyone, it just made SVB's existing problems more difficult to manage.

To put it another way -- SVB went bankrupt the old fashioned way... slowly and then all at once. The bank run was the inflection point.