ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. (NYSE:SFBS) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 22, 2024 5:15 PM ET

Company Participants

Davis Mange - Director of IR
Tom Broughton - CEO
Henry Abbott - CCO
Kirk Pressley - CFO
Rodney Rushing - EVP & COO

Conference Call Participants

Steven Moss - Raymond James
David Bishop - Hovde Group

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the ServisFirst Bancshares First Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce you to your host, Davis Mange, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, Davis. You may begin.

Davis Mange

Good afternoon and welcome to our first quarter earnings call. Today's speakers will cover some highlights from the quarter and then take your questions. We'll have Tom Broughton, our CEO; Henry Abbott, our Chief Credit Officer; and Kirk Pressley, our CFO.

I'll cover our forward-looking statements disclosure. Some of the discussion in today's earnings call may include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ from any projections shared today due to factors described in our most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and ServisFirst assumes no duty to update them.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

Tom Broughton

Thank you, Davis. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. We do think the first quarter is off to a good start of the year and we are optimistic we'll see improvement on a quarterly basis. Kirk Pressley is going to talk about our margin and deposit activity in a few minutes. In addition, our expenses are in line as expected. Henry Abbott will talk about our continued strong credit quality shortly after that.

So, looking at loans, the first thing I'll say is we had really good growth in the quarter with over $200 million in net loans. And more importantly, our loan pipeline is back to normal levels today and has increased 63% since year-end. In recent weeks our bankers are seeing greater activity in some projects that are postponed or are ramping up again. And I'd say our pipeline is very close to normal levels. Production side, we were fortunate to add nine new bankers in the first quarter, up from seven in the fourth quarter of 2023. Six of these producers are in the Memphis market. We also expect to announce a new market within a few weeks. We are working to better measure productivity of our commercial bankers as well as our support staff. Success is obvious for bankers. You know who's being productive and you know who's not, but we're working on other metrics to better gauge the required inputs to success. We are optimistic we can be successful in the coming quarters given the current economic environment.