- Key insight: The CEO of Home BancShares in Arkansas met last week with HoldCo Asset Management, the activist investor that pushed for Comerica’s sale and publicly criticized the business strategies of three other regional banks.
- What’s at stake: According to its CEO, Home is “open to whatever comes” in terms of M&A possibilities that may develop as a result of HoldCo’s pressure on certain banks.
- Forward look: The bank expects to announce its next acquisition in December.
Home BancShares in Conway, Arkansas, has raised its hand to be a buyer of certain banks that may find themselves being pressured to sell by the activist investor HoldCo Asset Management.
Home Chairman and CEO John Allison met in person with HoldCo representatives to learn more about the group’s strategy and “see what they’re doing,” Allison said Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at Stephens Annual Investment Conference in Nashville. Since July, HoldCo has staged public campaigns against four regional banks, including Dallas-based Comerica, which
“I said, if you hit on one that we’re sitting on in our area somewhere, I said, we’ll be your buyer,” Allison said in response to a question about bank mergers and acquisitions. “You know, we can be, not colluding with them, but we can be their buyer. So we’re open to whatever comes.”
HoldCo declined to comment Wednesday.
In addition to Comerica, South Florida-based HoldCo recently called out
Earlier this month, it
Allison on Tuesday echoed HoldCo’s complaints that certain bank deals have destroyed shareholder value. He warned that banks whose stock prices have been stagnant for the past decade, even as they’ve grown in assets and their CEOs have received higher salaries, may get a reckoning.
“These lost-decade banks, I think they’re going to get a hot shot in the butt, you know, I think somebody’s fixed to come after them and do something and I think they need it,” Allison said during the Q&A session. “I think it’s good for all of us to do better in the future. I mean, we work for the shareholders and why do I deserve more money than I got last year? Only if I perform better, would be my call.”
Home, a highly acquisitive company in the past, remains on the brink of announcing its latest acquisition. Last month, Allison said the $22.7 billion-asset bank
Allison dropped few hints about the seller, saying only that it has some “problems” with unrealized losses on its balance sheet and that it’s a “good bank [with] good people” in “good markets.” In October, he told analysts that the seller has “several billion dollars” of assets.
Home’s banking arm, Centennial, has branches in Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Alabama and New York City. During the questions-and-answer session, Allison said there’s not a lot left to buy in Florida that wouldn’t be dilutive. “They’re in the middle of scarcity in Florida,” he said.
The pending deal, which would be Home’s first since April 2022 when it
“If we can complete this deal, it will be accretive to book, accretive to tangible book and accretive to EPS on day one, not four years from now,” Allison said. “The day we sign the deal, it’ll be accretive to EPS. The price is agreed upon unless we find something somewhere.”
The Happy State Bank transaction turned out to be a headache for Home BancShares. The deal was plagued by asset-quality issues and a long-running legal dispute.
Catherine Leffert contributed to this article.