Southern Missouri Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMBC) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call January 30, 2024 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Stefan Chkautovich - Chief Financial Officer

Matt Funke - President & Chief Administrative Officer

Greg Steffens - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Kelly Motta - KBW

Andrew Liesch - Piper Sandler

Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Southern Missouri Bancorp Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute during the presentation portion of the call. There's an opportunity for question-and-answer session at the end. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference call over to Stefan Chkautovich, CFO of Southern Missouri Bancorp. Please go ahead.

Stefan Chkautovich

Thank you, Kathy. Good morning, everyone. This is Stefan Chkautovich, CFO with Southern Missouri Bancorp. Thank you for joining us.

The purpose of this call is to review the information and data presented in our quarterly earnings release dated Monday, January 29, 2024, and to take your questions. We may make certain forward-looking statements during today's call, and we refer you to our cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements contained in the press release.

I'm joined on the call today by Greg Steffens, our Chairman and CEO; and Matt Funke, President and Chief Administrative Officer. Matt will lead off our conversation today with some highlights from our most recent quarter.

Matt Funke

Thank you, Stefan, and good morning, everyone. This is Matt Funke. Thanks for joining us. I'll start off with the highlights from our December quarter, the second quarter of our fiscal year. Quarter-over-quarter profitability was down a bit as the higher cost of funds weighed on our margin, but for this current environment, we remain relatively pleased with the results and the outlook ahead.

We've absorbed the largest part of the impact of the prior year's sharp increase in short-term rates, and we've seen 22.1% net interest income growth year-over-year due to a larger balance sheet with the addition of the Citizens loan and securities portfolio early in the third quarter of the prior fiscal year, along with continued solid deposit and loan growth so far this fiscal year.

We earned $1.07 diluted in the December quarter, that's down $0.09 from the linked September quarter and down $0.19 from the December 2022 quarter. During the quarter, the bank executed a securities loss trade, selling bonds with a book value of $12.4 million, realizing a loss of $682,000, or $0.05 of earnings per fully diluted share after tax.