Kenneth H. Maloy, president and CEO of SouthCrest Financial Group, Inc. (SCSG:PK) recently announced the company’s preliminary 2014 fourth quarter earnings and said he expects a continued upward trend in coming quarterly reports.
SouthCrest is a $570 million asset bank holding company headquartered in Peachtree City. The company operates a 12 branch network throughout Georgia and Alabama through its subsidiary bank, SouthCrest Bank, N.A. The bank provides retail and commercial banking services, Small Business Administration lending, mortgage banking, and online banking services.
Maloy said “2014 was very much a transitional year for SouthCrest, but we are proud of the accomplishments during the year … Our employees worked extremely hard this year to drive the improvement in financial results that occurred during the second half of 2014. While profitability remains at levels far from where we expect the company to be over the next several quarters, we do believe in the people who have gotten us this far,” he added.
During the quarter the company produced net income of $26,000 or $0.00/share while dropping salary and benefit expenses by $330,000 from the third quarter, increasing the loan loss provision by $25,000.
The company experienced some seasonal decline in mortgage-related revenue during the quarter, but had the first meaningful SBA-related revenues to partially offset the mortgage decline.
The Company’s balance sheet was generally level with $2.8 million of loan growth while deposits grew by over $9 million from the third quarter.
“We were expecting better loan growth during the quarter, but we had one very large pre-payment that decreased the growth,” Maloy said. “Also, we tend to have some seasonal strength in deposits late in the year, so we do expect flat deposit levels during 1Q15.”
