SouthCrest Financial Group Reports Preliminary 1Q16 Earnings

PEACHTREE CITY, Ga., April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Andrew Borrmann, Chief Financial Officer of SouthCrest Financial Group, Inc. (PinkSheets:SCSG) announced today that the company reported preliminary net income of $913,000 or $0.11/share. “The ongoing cost control initiatives continued to bear fruit with an expense run rate of $19.3 million/year in March vs. a run rate of just under $22 million/year in December. We continue to be confident with the Company’s earlier guidance of a 3Q16 run rate of under $18 million/year.” Borrmann continued, “The efforts of all our employees during this period of expense rationalization have been critical to the profitability that occurred in the first quarter. As a result this profitability improvement, we expect to reverse the valuation allowance on our deferred tax asset sometime in the next few months.”

Deposits fell during the first quarter, seasonally consistent with historical trends at SouthCrest, due to public funds relationships.

The estimated Tier 1 Leverage ratio at the end of the quarter was 8.94%. On a fully converted basis (including the conversion of all preferred equity) TBV/share ended the quarter at $5.75 per share. The current fully converted share count at the end of the quarter is 8.380 million shares. In addition, the company still retains a deferred tax asset valuation allowance that totals approximately $1.36/fully converted share.

Asset quality continued its multi-quarter improvement trend with 1Q16 NPAs/total assets declining by 22 basis points to 1.18%. This was primarily due to the sale of the Company’s largest single OREO property during the quarter. Other real estate owned declined by nearly 40% from 4Q15 and now stands at $1.5 million.   

SouthCrest Financial Group, Inc. is a $555 million asset bank holding company headquartered in Peachtree City, Georgia. The company operates a 12 branch network throughout Georgia and Alabama through its subsidiary bank, SouthCrest Bank, N.A. The bank provides a full suite of retail and commercial banking services, SBA lending, and online banking services. 

This presentation may contain certain “forward-looking statements” that are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results and shareholder values to differ materially from those projected. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include economic conditions, government regulation and legislation, changes in interest rates, credit quality, competition, and other risk factors.