Investment Thesis
Hancock Whitney Corporation (HWC), with total assets of about $33 billion, is the parent company of Hancock Whitney Bank. The company's footprint spans Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, along the I-10 corridor with major offices in Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, and Jacksonville.
In my mind, HWC operates a highly valuable franchise driven by its outsized core deposit base. HWC typically does a great job of gathering lower-cost deposits in relatively rural areas and leveraging those into higher-yielding loans in major cities from Texas to Florida. Driven by the high level