LITTLE ROCK — Home BancShares earned $16.9 million in the fourth quarter, up 20 percent from $14.2 million in the final quarter of 2011, the Conway-based owner of Centennial Bank branches in three states said Thursday.
Home BancShares earned 60 cents a share, record income for any quarter, but it was still below the 65 cents that eight analysts who follow the bank expected, according to Thomson Reuters. The 60 cents was a 20 percent increase over 50 cents the bank earned in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Matt Olney, an analyst with Stephens Inc. who covers Home BancShares, said it was difficult to get an “apples-to-apples” comparison on earnings expectations for Home BancShares.
Most analysts expected Home BancShares to have 59 or 60 cents in earnings per share for the quarter, Olney said. One analyst had a significantly higher projection, which skewed the average expectation higher, said Olney, who owns no stock in the bank. Stephens intends to seek compensation for investment-banking services from Home BancShares in the near future.
Home BancShares closed at $34.25 Thursday on belowaverage volume, up 15 cents in trading on the Nasdaq exchange.
For the year, Home Banc-Shares earned a record $63 million, up 15 percent from $54.7 million in 2011. That equates to $2.23 earnings per share last year, compared with $1.85 earned per share in 2011.
Home BancShares had record earnings for each quarter of the year.
“We had a great year,” John Allison, Home BancShares’ chairman, said in a conference call Thursday. “We continue to set records. This quarter was no exception with record earnings, record [earnings per share] and record net interest income.”
BancShares closed on the purchase of two banks in the fourth quarter — Premier Bank of Tallahassee, Fla., and Heritage Bank in the Tampa, Fla., area.
The fourth quarter was better than he expected, said Olney, who projected earnings of 59 cents a share.
“And those two acquisitions look like they are going to be very good, too,” Olney said.
The bank is actively pursuing other purchases, said Randy Sims, Home BancShares’ chief executive officer.
When asked about how large an acquisition the bank could handle, Allison said the bank has enough capital to buy a bank of a little less than $3 billion in assets.
“That would get us to about $7 billion [in assets],” Allison said. “We would probably sit there for a while and see how good we are. That would stretch our capital a little bit, but we are generating quite a bit of capital right now. If it were a gamechanger deal, we’d look at something like that.”
The bank had $4.2 billion in assets at the close of last year, up from $3.6 billion at the end of 2011.
Centennial Bank has 54 percent of its assets in Arkansas, 40 percent in Florida and 6 percent in Alabama, Sims said.
Centennial Bank has 46 branches in Arkansas, 54 branches in Florida and seven branches in Alabama.
It expects to close four branches in the Tallahassee, Fla., area in the spring.
Business, Pages 27 on 01/18/2013