FBMS - The First Bancshares Inc. (FBMS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-01-28 11:08:09 ET
The First Bancshares, Inc. (FBMS)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
January 25, 2024 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Milton Cole - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Donna Lowery - Chief Financial Officer
JJ Fletcher - Chief Lending Officer
George Noonan - Chief Credit Officer
Conference Call Participants
Catherine Mealor - KBW
Matt Olney - Stephens
Christopher Marinac - Janney Montgomery Scott
Presentation
Operator
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the review of Fourth Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded.
I would now like to hand the call over to Hoppy Cole, CEO. Please go ahead.
Milton Cole
Good morning, everyone, and welcome. I've got several team members with us today in room. I've got Dee Dee Lowery, our CFO; George Noonan, our Chief Credit Officer; JJ Fletcher, our Chief Lending Officer.
I'll cover a few high-level items for the quarter and the year and then turn it over to each of the respective team members for more color in their respective area. Fourth quarter of 2023 operating earnings were lower than third quarter. We expected some margin compression during the quarter, and we experienced that about 13 basis points of core margin compression primarily due to the deposit campaign that we talked about in the previous earnings call associated with being a bit more aggressive towards the end of the year to support our loan growth and stem deposit outflows. Credit was solid again for the quarter. We had $80 million of net loan growth It's on a 6.3% on an annualized basis. Credit quality metrics remained strong, where we had 6 basis points of charge-offs, $2 million reduction in NPAs and past dues at a pretty low 23 basis points.
Dee Dee also talked about in her presentation, we did a bond restructure during the quarter in order to reposition a portion of the portfolio to improve our yield, improve our EPS. For the full year of 2023, the company performed extremely well. As you remember, we closed our acquisition of Heritage Southeast Bank on January 1 of last year at about $1.7 billion in assets in the overall organization....
The First Bancshares, Inc. (FBMS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript