SouthState Corporation. (NASDAQ:SSB) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 28, 2023 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

William Matthews - Chief Financial Officer

John Corbett - Chief Executive Officer

Steve Young - Chief Strategy Officer

Conference Call Participants

Catherine Mealor - KBW

Stephen Scouten - Piper Sandler

Kevin Fitzsimmons - D.A. Davidson

Michael Rose - Raymond James

Broderick Preston - UBS

David Bishop - Hovde Group

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Brent, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SouthState Corporation Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today’s call over to the Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Will Matthews. Sir, please go ahead.

William Matthews

Good morning, and welcome to SouthState’s Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. This is Will Matthews, and I’m here with John Corbett, Steve Young and Jeremy Lucas. John and I will provide some brief prepared remarks, and then we’ll open it up for questions. As always, a copy of our earnings release and presentation slides are on our Investor Relations website. Before we begin our remarks, I want to remind you that comments we make may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws and regulations. Any such forward-looking statements we may make are subject to the safe harbor rules. Please review the forward-looking disclaimer and safe harbor language in the press release and presentation for more information about our forward-looking statements and risks and uncertainties which may affect us.

Now I’ll turn the call over to John Corbett, our CEO.

John Corbett

Thank you, Will. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. When we had our last earnings call in April, the banking industry was still in the fog of war. Three months later, the fog is starting to clear. Liquidity is stabilizing. The new regulatory framework is coming into focus and SouthState is in a position of relative strength for the next phase of the cycle.

We’re pleased to report that for the first half of 2023, PPNR per share grew by 34% compared to the first half of last year. And so far this year, loan and deposit growth has been slightly better than our guidance. You’ll recall that for 2023, we plan to keep deposits flat and for loans to grow at a mid-single-digit pace. We projected that loan growth would be faster in the first half of the year a little slower in the back half of the year. We’re now at the halfway point for 2023 and deposits are up 2%, and loans have grown at a 9% annualized pace. So balance sheet growth is on track.