Investment Thesis
Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, Bank OZK (OZK) has $26 billion in assets and conducts operations through more than 250 offices in Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, California, New York, and Mississippi.
In order to ensure broad diversification, most banks don't allow for any one particular loan to be greater than ~0.5% of assets. Applying that standard to OZK would produce a lending limit of $130 million. However, the Real Estate Specialties Group ((RESG)) portfolio alone has over 63 credits above $100 million in size. RESG, which focuses on larger,