ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. (SFBS)’s Fourth Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

William Foshee – CFO
Well then that, I mean you’ve got the Charleston market, you have got all of kind of Metro, we’ve got some additional lending staff in our existing markets. I am just talking about just core earnings, core non-interest expense one year to the next.

Q: Got it. And that includes your tax credits too as well?

William Foshee – CFO
Tax credits will be in that tax rate number.

Q:Excuse me, the losses from that goal above the line in expense?

William Foshee – CFO
Right, that was yes, that would be in it.

Q: Got it, okay, thank you Bud.

William Foshee – CFO
Thank you.

Operator
As a remainder, to ask a question you may press * and then 1. The next question will come from Christopher Marinac of FIG Partners. Please go ahead.

Q: Thanks, good morning. Tom just wanted to follow back up on sort of the strategic conversation that you had with us this morning. What’s your thought about buy versus build, just kind of comparing and contrast the decision in Atlanta that we saw recently with the news here today on Charleston?

Thomas Broughton – President & CEO
Yes, we are pretty much committed to an organic growth. That’s what we have done for almost these 10 years and we think that’s the best opportunity for us. We don’t think that buying banks is again, the buying banks and doing financial engineering to boost mid income is not what we think we need to be doing with our shareholders. We think our best way to be available to our shareholders is what we have done for the last 10 years Chris, and as long as we can always we can attract new people. We get calls all the time from people and we think we are a good place for people to do business and be bankers. And I think we’ve added, so we added 13 new bankers last year. I would expect we do more than that this year, Chris. We see a lot of opportunities from an organic growth side and that, we think that’s the best proposition for our shareholders.

Q: Great, Tom, thank you for that color. And just a follow-up I guess just to specifically talk about C&I, whether it’s Atlanta or Charleston. What would you envision sort of average deal size as being, it’s going to be any different from what you are already doing in Birmingham and Mobile, Nashville, et cetera?