South Plains Financial reports Q4 EPS 96c, consensus 68c

Reports Q4 tangible book value per share $25.40 vs $25.75 in the previous quarter and $23.47 last year. Curtis Griffith, South Plains’ Chairman and CEO, commented, “I am very proud of our performance this past year as we successfully navigated a challenging environment with a focus on delivering strong financial results. We tightly managed our liquidity to optimize our profitability and return metrics while maintaining our conservative approach to underwriting and risk management. We have also managed the anticipated decline in our indirect auto portfolio as well as a heightened level of loan payoffs and paydowns that has obscured the strong, underlying loan production that has built through the year. Importantly, we are seeing a growing level of optimism across our customer base that is translating into the strongest new business production pipeline that we have seen in more than two years. This bodes positively for the year ahead where we expect to deliver low to mid-single digit loan growth for the FY25. Additionally, we are seeing deposit pricing fall across our markets which contributed to our strong margin expansion in the Q4.