Southside Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:SBSI) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call July 25, 2024 12:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Suni Davis - CRO
Lee Gibson - President and CEO
Julie Shamburger - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Woody Lay - KBW
Brett Rabatin - Hovde
Matt Olney - Stephens

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to Southside Bancshares, Inc. Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Suni Davis, Chief Risk Officer. Please go ahead.

Suni Davis

Thank you, Justin. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Southside Bancshares' second quarter 2024 earnings call. A transcript of today's call will be posted on southside.com under Investor Relations. During today's call and in other disclosures and presentations, I will remind you that any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could materially change our current forward-looking assumptions are described in our earnings release and Form 10-K.

Joining me today are Lee Gibson, CEO; and Julie Shamburger, CFO. First, Lee will share his comments on the quarter, and then Julie will give an overview of our financial results.

I will now turn the call over to Lee.

Lee Gibson

Thank you, Suni. Good morning, everyone.

This morning, we reported second quarter net income of $24.7 million, earnings per share of $0.81, a return on average tangible common equity of 16.9% and continued strong asset quality metrics. Linked quarter, our net interest margin increased 1 basis point to 2.87%. During the quarter, we sold approximately $93 million of lower coupon municipal securities, unwound the related fair value swaps and reinvested most of the proceeds in higher-yielding agency mortgage-backed securities.

We estimate the payback of the loss on the sale of securities will be less than one year. Linked quarter, loans increased an annualized 1.1% as we experienced a few payoffs. Our loan pipeline remains solid, and we continue to target 5% loan growth for 2024. Since the last quarter, we have continued implementing initiatives associated with our 5-year strategic plan.

One of the initiatives is to carefully examine additional revenue as well as cost containment opportunities. Attrition and a slight reduction in workforce resulted in additional cost savings of approximately $600,000. Repricing of services in our wealth management and trust department will result in additional revenue of approximately $500,000.