Great Southern Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:GSBC) Q4 2023 Results Conference Call January 23, 2024 3:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Kelly Polonus - VP, Communications & Marketing Officer, IR
Joseph Turner - President, CEO
Rex Copeland - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Andrew Liesch - Piper Sandler
Damon DelMonte - KBW
John Rodis – Janney

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Great Southern Bancorp, Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advice that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Kelly Polonus. Please go ahead.

Kelly Polonus

Thank you, Victor. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. The purpose of this call is to discuss the company's results for the quarter ending December 31, 2023.

Before we begin, I need to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements about future events and financial performance. These statements are subject to a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated or projected.

For a list of some of these factors, please see the forward-looking statements disclosure in our fourth quarter earnings release and other public filings. President and CEO, Joe Turner; and Chief Financial Officer, Rex Copeland are on the call with me.

I'll now turn the call over to Joe.

Joseph Turner

Okay. Thanks, Kelly and good afternoon, everybody. We appreciate you joining us today for our fourth quarter earnings call.

As we anticipated, our fourth quarter results reflected the challenging operating environment that the banking industry is experiencing right now. While our earnings were down this quarter and we continue to expect significant competition for deposits in a challenging environment for noninterest income. We are steadfast in our long-term view of running the company like we have for decades in the cyclical industry.

For the fourth quarter, we earned $1.11 per share or $13.1 million compared to $1.84 or $22.6 million in the fourth quarter of '22. Earnings per diluted common share were $1.33 in the third quarter of '23. In light of the current interest rate environment, key performance drivers included continued increase in deposit costs and significant competition for deposits as well as expected continuation of lower loan origination volume.