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Bank OZK (OZK)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Fri, Jan 17, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Bank of the Ozarks Incorporated fourth quarter earnings release conference. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to Susan Blair. Please go ahead.

Susan Blair

Management

Good morning. I'm Susan Blair, Executive Vice President in charge of investor relations for Bank of the Ozarks. The purpose of this call is to discuss the Company's results for the quarter just ended and our outlook for upcoming quarters. Our goal is to make this call as useful as possible in understanding our recent operating results and outlook for the future. To that end, we may make certain forward-looking statements about our plans, goals, expectations, thoughts, beliefs, estimates, and outlook including statements about economic, real estate market, competitive, credit market, and interest rate conditions, revenue growth, net income and earnings per share, net interest margin, net interest income, noninterest income including service charge income, mortgage lending income, trust income, net FDIC loss share accretion income, other income from loss share and purchased non-covered loans, and gains on sales of foreclosed assets including foreclosed assets covered by FDIC loss share agreements, noninterest expense, our efficiency ratio, including our goals for achieving a sub-40% and eventually a sub-30% efficiency ratio, asset quality and our various asset quality ratios, our expectations for net charge-offs and our net charge-off ratios, our allowance for loan and lease losses; loan, lease, and deposit growth, including growth in our legacy loan and lease portfolio through 2014; growth from unfunded closed loans; and growth in earning assets in 2014, 2015 and beyond; changes in expected cash flows of our covered loan portfolio; changes in the value and volume of our securities portfolio; the opening and relocating of banking offices; our goals for traditional mergers and acquisitions; changes in growth in our staff, including our plans to build our corporate loan specialties group team and add new lease originators; other opportunities to properly deploy capital; and our goal of improving on our 2013 earnings in 2014. You should understand that our actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, due to a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which we will point out during the course of this call. For a list of certain risks associated with our business, you should also refer to the forward-looking information caption of the Management's Discussion and Analysis section of our periodic public reports, the forward-looking statements caption of our most recent earnings release, and the description of certain risk factors contained in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, all as filed with the SEC. Forward-looking statements made by the Company and its management are based on estimates, projections, beliefs, and assumptions of management at the time of such statements and are not guarantees of future performance. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement based on the occurance of future events, the receipt of new information or otherwise. Any references to non-GAAP financial measures are meant to provide meaningful insight and are reconciled with GAAP in our earnings press release. Now, let me turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, George Gleason.

George Gleason

Management

Good morning and thank you for joining today's call. We are pleased to report our fourth-quarter results, which provided an excellent finish to another excellent year. In today's call, in addition to discussing our recent results, we're going to make a number of comments regarding strategic plans for the future. Let's get to some details. Net interest income is traditionally our largest source of revenue and as a function of both the volume of average earnings assets and net interest margin. Of course, loans and leases comprise the majority of our earning assets. In the quarter just ended, our loans and leases, excluding covered loans and purchased non-covered loans, grew $110 million, bringing our total growth in such loans and leases for 2013 to $517 million. Since 2012, we had predicted a minimum 2013 growth in loans and leases of $360 million. And in our January 2013 conference, call we introduced the possibility that such loans and leases could grow as much as $480 million during 2013. We are pleased to report that our actual results exceeded both that minimum goal and the stretch goal. Our unfunded balance of closed loans increased another $78 million during the quarter just ended, and now stands at $1.21 billion, up substantially from $769 million at December 31, 2012. While some portion of this unfunded balance will not ultimately be advanced, we expect that the vast majority will be advanced. This has favorable implications for future growth in loans and leases outstanding. We are very pleased with the growth in both funded and unfunded balances of loans and leases in 2013. But we are even more pleased with the credit and interest rate risk profile of the loans and leases we booked. Throughout last year, we operated in an intensely competitive environment, in which…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Jennifer Demba from SunTrust. Jennifer Demba – SunTrust : Hey. Good morning, George.

George Gleason

Management

Good morning, Jennifer Jennifer Demba – SunTrust : Just a follow-up question on your comments on this corporate lending initiative. Just curious if you could give us some more details on what size range of loans you will be targeting. Any industries you might be staying away from or not? It's become quite a competitive landscape for that segment of the market over the last few years.

George Gleason

Management

Yes. And it has become very competitive in a barbell sort of way. The competition for C&I lending that is done at the community bank level is very straightforward C&I lending that's done by regional banks. It's just – the pricing on that has gone to almost nothing. On the other end, in the large national syndicated deals, which are the bailiwick of really, you know, the top 25 or 30 banks in the country that do those deals, and I guess really even more the top 10 or 15, primarily, that pricing has gotten back probably within 100 basis points of, you know, the low levels of pricing that you would have seen in 2007, 2008. Just like Real Estate Specialties Group, what we’re looking to do is work in that market between the highly aggressive local competition and the highly aggressive big national syndicated deals, where transactions have size and scale and complexity but where you can get a lot of very high level of equity – 50% type equity in transactions with quality management team and quality companies, but you are underneath the universe of the big banks and you are above the universe of your more localized competitors. And you can get really good credit terms and you can still get really good pricing because there are not a lot of competitors in that sector. That sector right now is really dominated by a handful of debt funds that really do a lot of that business. Because of the combination and size and sophistication it takes to do that business, we think there is a real window of opportunity there. Jennifer Demba – SunTrust : And with the leader you hired, where did he come from?

George Gleason

Management

He was – Manish is a Wharton graduate. He had background at Credit Suisse and he was a member of one of the seven credit teams at Deutsche Bank that was doing their large syndicated deals. So he has been in Wall Street doing the larger transactions, and he and I have had numerous discussions over many months about how we can transfer the skills, ability, and knowledge that he brings from that big syndicated loan area and downsize that to much smaller transactions where we could find competitive advantage in the market. I am very excited about the Manish's joining our team. I am very excited about the prospects for that division. But as I said, we are going to grow that in a very methodical and careful sort of way, much like we did Real Estate Specialties Group. I think in the first 12 months of Real Estate Specialties Group we actually closed one loan and we may start this off very slowly. We are going to be very careful about what we do there and make sure that as we originate loans, they really are high-quality transactions with a lot of equity and we get paid appropriately for it. Jennifer Demba – SunTrust : Well, great. Thanks for the color.

George Gleason

Management

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Brian Zabora – KBW: Yes. Good morning.

George Gleason

Management

Hey. Good morning, Brian. Brian Zabora – KBW: I have a question on loan yields. They were – say, the core loan yields – originated loan yields were a little bit up in the quarter. Could you give us some background on maybe what happened there? Are you seeing better pricing than maybe the larger loans? Was there any kind of one-time item that maybe boosted the loan yield this quarter?

George Gleason

Management

There was a couple of items that probably gave the legacy loan yields a little bit of a boost. And one of those items is – we had one loan that paid off that had a pretty good yield maintenance provision in it, so we booked I think about $150,000, $160,000 of extra interest income on that because of the yield maintenance covenants that were in that. And then, we had a high level of prepayments in Q4. We had about $200 million in loans pay off. You know we deferred loan origination costs over the life of the loan. We defer loan fees over the life of the loan. We have more fees deferred than origination costs in the aggregate on the portfolio. So when loans prepay, it tends to drop a little of those FAS-114. Now, that's the old term. I don't know what the new ASC codification is for the…

Unidentified Speaker

Analyst

FAS-91.

George Gleason

Management

I'm sorry. I'm even wrong on that. FAS-91. I'm glad I've got accountants here. Our FAS-91 deferred fees of, you know, net deferred fees fall into income. So we did have probably another couple of hundred thousand dollars of income that fell into interest income as a result of a little bit higher than normal level of prepayments in the portfolio in Q4. You’ll also note, for the reasons I discussed in the prepared remarks, that our yield uncovered loans escalated substantially from Q3 to Q4, as it did from Q2 to Q3, as we just seem to be identifying more loans each quarter in the last couple of quarters of the year where we felt like it was appropriate to amortize those previously non-accretable differences in the income. So that trend is likely to continue to be an upward trend in the covered loan portfolio. If you took $300,000 or $400,000 off the legacy loan portfolio that would probably get you to a more normalized yield for the legacy portfolio; which is probably back pretty consistent with where we were in Q3. Brian Zabora – KBW: Great. That is very helpful. And then on expenses in the fourth quarter, other operating expenses were up a bit. Is that related to the build that you are talking about, these strategies? Or is there anything kind of one-time in the fourth quarter that results in a bit elevated number again in the fourth quarter?

George Gleason

Management

Yes, there was. We started really about midyear making a gigantic all-out push to resolve a lot of our more complex collection and problem asset resolution issues in the loss share portfolios. Really tried to negotiate a lot of settlements and get a lot of those lingering complex collection litigation issues resolved. You really saw that hit our Q4 numbers into places. One, if you look at other income from loss share loans that was a very robust number – $4 million plus; $4.8 million, I think. Is that right? $4.825 million. Then you saw a big increase in non-interest expense as we spent a lot of money, incurred a lot of legal fees and other collection costs, and just miscellaneous cost related to that effort. You know, I would guess that our real effort to put a lot of those issues to bed and wrap them up and clean them up so we can get a much cleaner start in those portfolios going into 2014 probably resulted in – and I am guessing at this number – but I would say there's about $1 million of extra cost related to that. And it probably – the unusual effort to resolve about bunch of these things probably resulted in about $1 million of extra income in that recovery item. We probably had more non-interest income than would be a normalized run rate by roughly $1 million; and that's a real rough number. We probably had about $1 million more expense related to those initiatives than would be a normal number. Brian Zabora – KBW: Thank you for taking my questions.

George Gleason

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Moving on. We’ll hear from Michael Rose from Raymond James. Michael Rose – Raymond James: Hey. Good morning, George. How are you?

George Gleason

Management

Doing great, Michael. How are you? Michael Rose – Raymond James: Good. Hey, I just wanted to circle back. I know you increased the monthly loan growth guidance. How much of that increase – I guess $5 million a month is coming from some of the new initiatives that you mentioned: your community bank initiative, the leasing initiative, et cetera? And then beyond that how should we think about your previous statements around what you would expect for 2015? Any color you can provide there would be helpful. Thanks.

George Gleason

Management

Yes. We’re not ready to give specific guidance on 2015. But I think the comment that I made in my prepared remarks that we are expecting increasing levels of growth in earnings assets in 2014, 2015 and beyond reflects our general mindset that we believe we are putting in place the talent, the infrastructure, the units, the teams, the offices that are needed to accelerate growth from the $600 million minimum level we are providing guidance for 2014 to a higher level in 2015. Perhaps we will be in a position in next quarter's conference call to quantify that. But at this point, we’re just – the only guidance I will give you at this point is we’re expecting more in 2015 than in 2014. And it's a result of this infrastructure that we are building in, designed to generate earning assets. In regard to how much of the $60 million annual increase in guidance as a result of community banking, it's actually just a result of sort of re-summing our guidance for Real Estate Specialties Group, community banking, the leasing – some of that increase is a slight upgrade in our growth expectations for leasing next year, as we have made the decision to hire more originators than we would have expected to hire night 90 days ago because we think the opportunity is ripe there. Part of that reflects the fact that are really putting a greater emphasis on community banking and Matt Reddin and John Carter's promotion to those offensive coordinator sort of roles. Obviously, we had Houston Real Estate Specialties Group in our earlier projection because we had been planning that for a long period of time. We tweaked, I think, the overall guidance up slightly because of the plan to add L.A. Real Estate Specialties Group office in February. We’ve been in dialogue with the gentleman who is going to run that office for probably six, seven, eight months now, but we really didn't have a deal worked out for him to do that until after our October conference call. So, none of that office was built into our guidance. We have assumed some fairly conservative startup numbers for that office and that slide addition is also factored into the $600 million number. Michael Rose – Raymond James: Okay. And just one follow-up, if I could. What are you looking for in an M&A transaction at this point? Size parameters matter. I know they haven't, historically. I know we've moved away from FDIC-assisted deals. Can you kind of discuss any change in parameters? And then also, kind of what the pipeline looks like? How many deals? More deals, less deals versus a couple of months ago? Thanks.

George Gleason

Management

About the same number of deals we’re looking at now as what we were looking at a quarter ago. As I said, and is said repeatedly for the last year and a half or two years, we’re seeing as many opportunities as we can take a look at. In fact, we are seeing more opportunities than we can take a look at more constantly prioritizing what we look at. You know the transaction in Houston is probably on the small side of what we would generally want to do. We did that transaction at that size and are very excited about that transaction, because, you know, I can't imagine any acquisition having three better markets in which to provide you a foothold entry than Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. And so, you know, we would do acquisitions that size again, if they provided that sort of strategic and compelling factors to us. We might do an acquisition that is smaller than that, but we would probably only do an acquisition smaller than that, if it was sitting right on top of an existing franchise or footprint or had some really super compelling attribute to it, where we could, you know, get disproportionate cost saves, or pick up a line of business we would really like to be in that we’re not in, or something like that. So, I – bottom line is I think the odds are that future acquisitions will tend to be larger than the Omnibank transaction. That could be something in the size of the FNB Shelby transaction or we would certainly be comfortable doing transactions as large as a couple of billion dollars. So we’re looking to cross across a broad size range of smaller deals like the Geneva Alabama deal that we did 13, 14…

George Gleason

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll take another question that comes from Peyton Green from Sterne Agee. Peyton Green – Sterne Agee: Yes. Good morning, George. Congratulations on a great year and a great quarter. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the commercial lending effort and maybe what do you think a reasonable ramp period is. I know you qualified it by saying that the commercial Real Estate Specialties Group maybe did one loan in their first year. Is there anything that you think would take longer in this approach, or might be a little quicker?

George Gleason

Management

You know it probably – I think it will probably be faster than that, because the skill sets of our Company and our sophistication in structuring and handling transactions that we have developed over the last decade through our Real Estate Specialties Group provide us a lot of reference points and tools that are transferable to a non-real estate setting. Certainly you've got other issues and complexities in non-real estate loans, but a lot of the skill sets that we have developed and mastered and really spent a lot of money building over the last decade – last 11 years with Real Estate Specialties Group will transfer over. So I think that does give us a considerably faster ramp-up profile of this. But, again, we’ve been – in the guidance we’ve given – we’ve been very conservative on this unit and assumed it ramps up fairly slowly, just because you know we don't know. And we’re not going to – I don't want to go out and give guidance that assumes a high growth rate for that unit or a medium growth rate for that unit and then we decide we want to be more deliberate and cautious about it. And we need to go slower. And I am doing that in the face of having higher guidance out there. So we’ve given guidance on the assumption that it is a very slow ramp. Peyton Green – Sterne Agee: Okay. And then with regard to the community banking effort, you mentioned that deposit costs were likely to go up. Is that the result of spinning 10 or 15 branches that might not have an effect on other markets, but trying to drive growth in those markets where you think you can get more deposits than maybe you have had historically?

George Gleason

Management

Yes. Peyton Green – Sterne Agee: Or is this a broader growth?

George Gleason

Management

No. It would be a selected, targeted typical market segmentation strategy where we would pick the markets where we can, you know, get the most growth at the lowest overall impact on our cost of funds. We probably won't need to do that. You know we’re setting on 100-something million dollars of – $130 million of surplus cash right now. So it will be, you know, late and we’re generating net cash. It seems like, from our deposit base as we go without doing anything to spin up offices. So, it's probably a second quarter phenomenon where we spin those up. And you know that could even be pushed out, if our Omnibank transaction closes. We made other acquisitions and they happen to have net cash, then that could adjust the timing of that. So we’ll just manage that as we go. But we’re not thinking significant increases in cost. I’m thinking, one or two basis points a quarter increase in our cost of interest-bearing deposits over the course of the year. Peyton Green – Sterne Agee: Okay. And then, last question, if you could remind me when the conversion is on the North Carolina acquisition and to what degree have you mined the expected cost savings out of that?

George Gleason

Management

We still got quite a bit of cost saves to get there and no date has been set on the conversion for FNB Shelby for core systems. We’ve converted a number of their ancillary systems, but not the core system. We’re probably about two weeks away from completing a – what’s basically been about a four or five-month comprehensive request for proposal process from FIS, Bankway, Jack Henry, and FiServ. Looking at the core systems that each of them runs, it would be appropriate for us – it's a $30 billion, $40 billion, $50 billion bank – and really analyzing where we want to – what core platform we want to be operating on. Our new Chief Information Officer, Sean O'Connell, has been with us now several months leading that process along with Tyler Vance who, as you know, last year was promoted about three or four months ago to Chief Operating Officer. They’re doing a great job running that process. They've already identified some very nice cost saves and economies in our operating systems, as well as making a number of improvements in our operational capabilities even in the short run before we consider core conversions. So, we think we are making great progress on both capabilities and cost so far and we will narrow in on what core system we are going to convert to. If we are going to convert it. It may be that we stay on our existing core system longer-term. We've gotten a lot of help from our existing provider, who has been working with us on capabilities and other elements of that system, just making us feel better about the system we’re on, although we are still very seriously looking at all options. So, we’ll have that narrowed down. And once we have determined what core system we're going to be operating on the longer-term, we will then line up the order of conversions. You know the – we've got the Shelby branches to convert; we've got the Omnibank deal we expect to close in the first week of March. And it will just depend on what system we're going to as to what order we convert, whoever we are converting to. Peyton Green – Sterne Agee: Okay. So you would expect the conversion on your – if you change, the conversion on your end to a new system would be done sometime this year, and then just stack the others on top of it.

George Gleason

Management

Yes. We expect to have all of it done by year-end 2014 and probably would do the first conversion in the third quarter. Peyton Green – Sterne Agee: Okay. Great. Thank you very much George.

George Gleason

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Moving on. We’ll take a question from Andy Stapp from Merrion Capital Group. Andy Stapp – Merrion Capital Group: All my questions have been answered. Thank you.

George Gleason

Management

Thank you, Andy. Andy Stapp – Merrion Capital Group: Certainly.

Operator

Operator

And up next, we have Matt Olney from Stephens. Matt Olney – Stephens, Inc.: Hey. Good morning, George.

George Gleason

Management

Hey, Matt. Matt Olney – Stephens, Inc.: Hey. Increasing the production of your leasing division was one of your priorities you discussed today. Can you talk more about why now is the right time to expand this group? Also remind us what the average yields are within that division.

George Gleason

Management

Our yields in that division are probably about 8.5%. New origination yields are running really from about probably a 7.5% to 9%. On those – it’s a small ticket leasing operation. And we’ve pretty consistently had 8%, 9% type yields in that portfolio, mid-7%'s to mid-9% yields over the life of the business, which we‘ve run for a decade. I think our highest loss year at the depth of the downturn, we were less than 200 basis points in losses. And we typically are running 50 to 100 basis points in annual losses on that portfolio. So – and it’s certainly has been stress-tested through a couple of cycles now, so we really have gotten comfortable with the business model and Scott's leadership in that portfolio. So, you know, part of our comfort level is we just had a couple of economic cycles of experience with the portfolio. And the way we run it, the credit selection – which we are very selective on credit the way we do it, has proven to be very successful. It’s left us with really nice spreads after losses in every year. So we‘re very pleased with that level of business. We think the timing is right to do it because, you know, a lot of the economic downturn flushed a lot of potential customers out of the market. And, you know, a lot of customers who would have been potential customers failed, so the quality of application we are seeing now and the quality of the customer are generally folks that, you know, withstood the recession and managed to maintain profitability and financial viability throughout the downturn. And they’re coming out here on the other side and they ‘re seeing new growth opportunities and they need to add new pieces of equipment and so forth. So, we like this part of the cycle because a lot of the guys, you know, that would not have withstood a cycle are gone. And the quality of customer you are seeing, if it ‘s something that weathered that cycle, shows a pretty good management and financial ability on their part. So, we think it’s a good time to expand it. Matt Olney – Stephens, Inc.: Okay. That's helpful. And then secondly, you mentioned in the prepared remarks about the percent of variable rate loans has increased over the last 12 months. How should we be thinking about that relative to your initiatives on the Community Bank side, corporate lending team and the leasing division?

George Gleason

Management

Our goal is to continue to increase that percentage. So, I would hope that when we have this call 12 months from now, that we can report that our percent of variable rate loans is up another, you know, 2%, 3%, 4%, as a percent of the portfolio compared to where it is today. So, the lenders in all the units of the Company understand that focus is generating variable-rate loans, not fixed rate loans. Now, we generate a lot of fixed rate loans in our community banking model just because they’re fully amortizing two-, three-, five-year loans and it's just not efficient or appropriate to balloon those or to variable-rate those. So, we do a lot of that in community banking. But our Real Estate Specialties Group, which of course some is half of our non-loss share, non-purchased loan portfolio now has zero fixed rate loans. Everything we do there is variable-rate. We expect that to continue to be the case. And as that part of the portfolio continues to grow as a percent of the total portfolio, then that accentuates the bias toward a higher level of variable-rate loans going forward. I think our Corporate Loan Specialties Group – whatever they originate – I would expect to also be variable-rate. So I think they will also contribute to that bias. Matt Olney – Stephens, Inc.: Okay. That's helpful. Thank you George.

Operator

Operator

And we have a question from Blair Brantley from BB&T Capital Markets. Excuse me. Blair Brantley – BB&T Capital Markets: Hey, George. How are you? George Gleason Sure. I’m fine, Blair. How are you? Blair Brantley – BB&T Capital Markets: Good. Probably a couple of follow-ups on that. Regarding the leasing book, from a geographic perspective is that going to be within your branch, subprime primarily? Or are you seeing potential growth outside?

George Gleason

Management

It never has been. We’ve originated leases in 40 states. Blair Brantley – BB&T Capital Markets: Okay.

George Gleason

Management

And it’s been a pretty much all across the country sort of business from the get-go. Blair Brantley – BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. So no change there, then. Okay. And then also speaking to the variable rates, how much of that is still having floors put on them for the new pre-production?

George Gleason

Management

The – I can give you some really good data on that. 94% of our variable-rate loans have floors in them. Now, if you – 70 per – let’s you – if you – rates go up 0.25%, the 94% that are at a floor rate today – if rates go up a quarter, only 70% of the variable rate loans are at their floor. And if rates go up 100 basis points, only 43% of the variable-rate loans are at their floor. And if rates go up 200 basis points, only 7.76% of our variable-rate loans are at their floor. So, the floors will tend to mute the adjustment somewhat through the first hundred basis points and less significantly through the second hundred basis points. But by the time rates are moving 200 basis points, almost everything is off their floor. Less than 5% of the portfolio in total would still be at a floor rate. So if – that's a much less significant factor than it would have been in our discussion of this a year ago or two years ago. A year ago or two years ago, the percent of loans that didn't adjust in an up 100 and didn't adjust in an up 200 because of the floors was much, much higher than it is today. And that’s one of the reasons if you look at our interest rate risk disclosures – and, of course we don't have 12/31 interest rate risk disclosure. But that movement and evolution of where these floor rates are and is one of the reasons that for the last four, five, six, seven, eight quarters our interest rate risk model has shown us going from very slightly liability sensitive to vary slightly asset sensitive. And that’s largely a result of two things: the increasing percentage of variable-rate loans and the diminished muting of our ability to raise rates, caused by the fact that, as rates rise, they're caused by the fact that loans are at a floor that is well above the formula rate. That number is greatly diminishing. Blair Brantley – BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. And then our one – a one small housekeeping item. Is there anything different in your tax rate for this quarter? How should we think about that going forward? Looks like it kind of went up a little bit this quarter.

George Gleason

Management

I am not aware of anything in that. Blair Brantley – BB&T Capital Markets: Okay.

George Gleason

Management

And Greg is nodding to the negative, as well. It’s what it is. Blair Brantley – BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. Thank you.

George Gleason

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we have a question from Brian Martin from FIG Partners.

George Gleason

Management

Good morning, Brian. Brian Martin – FIG Partners: I'll keep it short here. I know you're probably getting tired. The community, the growth you talked about for 2014, Just let me break out kind of how much you expected that to come from the community bank group that you alluded to, that it's kind of expanding a bit here, or growing. Can you just kind of put a fence around maybe how much growth you expect to come from that group, just in general? And maybe what areas are performing the best or giving you the most optimism there?

George Gleason

Management

Well, the best markets probably continue to be the Central Arkansas division and the Charlotte unit. Although, we are seeing some nice upsurge in opportunities from our loss share markets. In one period a few weeks ago, I guess it was about two weeks before Christmas, I approved four different loans in five days that ranged from $1 million to $2.5 million in size. Each out of a different one of our loss share markets. And you know we just haven't seen those sorts of opportunities, and my guys are telling me that they've got a good pipelines of opportunities working in those markets. And you know those markets are finally beginning to heal up enough that we are seeing a little more new volume opportunities each quarter there. So, you know, it’s spread broadly across the Company. Community banking is going to be a bigger part of our growth expectation in 2014 and 2015 than it was in 2013; which it was very little in 2013. But Real Estate Specialties Group, certainly with the expanded staff we have put in place there and the expanded number of offices there, will continue to be the dominant growth engine for the next several years. Brian Martin – FIG Partners: Okay. And in Real Estate Specialties Group the offices you put in and all the people you – the markets you have talked about, does that kind of – is that what you are limited to for 2014? Or would you expect new offices beyond what you have talked about, or are they possible later in 2014?

George Gleason

Management

Well, I – we don't have any expectations or plans right now for new offices beyond Houston, which we opened the first week of January, and L.A. which opens mid-February. Beyond that we do not have any plans for additional Real Estate Specialties Group offices in 2014. With that said, if the right individual with the right skill set and profile came along, I wouldn't shut the door on another office. But we have no plans and we are not out looking for anybody else right now. We are focusing on what we've got lined up and what we've already got in place.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Speakers, I will turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.

George Gleason

Management

Thank you all for joining the call today. There being no further questions, that concludes our call. Have a great day. We look forward to talking with you in about three months. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

And that does conclude our conference today. Thank you all for your participation.