STUART, Fla., March 23, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Seacoast Banking
Corporation of Florida
("Seacoast") (NASDAQ: SBCF) today announced the selection of two
new highly qualified directors:
- Herb Lurie, Senior Advisor,
Guggenheim Securities
- Tim Huval, Senior Vice
President, Chief Human Resources Officer, Humana
Following the appointment of Lurie and Huval, Seacoast's board
will consist of 14 directors. Seacoast expects to appoint Lurie to
its board of directors at its April board meeting, and expects to
appoint Huval at a board meeting to be held after mid-year.
Dennis S. Hudson, III, Chairman
and CEO of Seacoast, said, "After a thorough and deliberate
selection process that began last Fall, we are delighted to select
directors of such outstanding caliber to join Seacoast's board.
Herb and Tim are both well-recognized and highly accomplished
executives with deep experience in commercial banking, operations
and human resources. The community banking industry is undergoing
massive change, and I am confident that Herb and Tim will be
instrumental in helping Seacoast implement our transformation
strategy and drive continued shareholder value."
Lurie said, "Seacoast has distinguished itself from other
community banks by continuing to invest in its digital platform,
driving organic growth and enabling it to benefit from the
acquisition of other Florida
institutions. I look forward to continuing to work with Seacoast's
management and the board on the execution of its strategy."
Huval said, "Seacoast is becoming Florida's preeminent community-based
institution by offering its customers digital and mobile services
that are on-par with money center banks. I welcome this opportunity
to work with Seacoast's talented management team and board as they
continue the bank's transformation into an engaged and
customer-focused institution."
The Company also announced that it has reached an agreement with
Basswood Capital Management ("Basswood"), a substantial shareholder
with whom Seacoast has maintained a constructive dialogue for many
years. Basswood is currently the Company's second largest
shareholder. Under the terms of the agreement, Seacoast will grant
Matthew Lindenbaum, co-founder of
Basswood, non-voting observer status at Seacoast's board of
director meetings for a minimum of six months, effective at the
board's next meeting. Basswood has agreed to abide by other
certain agreements for the same term.
Hudson said, "We have an active dialogue with our shareholders
and welcome the opportunity to consider their perspectives. Our
agreement with Basswood, a longtime substantial shareholder, will
provide them with additional visibility into Seacoast's
transformation strategy and our corporate governance process."
"Over the past four years, we have actively recruited new talent
to our board to increase its diversity of thought and experience
and better align overall board capability with Seacoast's strategic
focus. We have focused considerable attention on board development,
during which time we have appointed an independent lead director
and, with the two new directors announced today, will have added
seven new directors, all of whom have the skills needed to help
navigate the changing environment impacting our business. As a
result, our overall board composition has been significantly
altered across a number of important aspects, creating a vibrant
board culture with an unrelenting focus on creating value for all
shareholders," Hudson added.
Strong 2015 Operating and Financial Performance,
Well-Positioned to Generate Shareholder Value in 2016 through
Continued Execution of Seacoast's Balanced Growth Strategy
"Seacoast's board and management believes Seacoast is
well-positioned to generate increased shareholder value through the
continued execution of its balanced growth strategy. Our full-year
2015 performance demonstrates substantial improvement in earnings
and superior customer growth, highlighted by an impressive 214%
increase in earnings per share as well as consumer and business
loan growth of 61% and 45%, respectively," Hudson said.
"The execution of our strategy is expected to produce continued
earnings per share growth in 2016. Seacoast expects earnings per
share of $1.00, representing
approximately 32% growth from our 2015 results. Moreover, we expect
that Seacoast's commitment to the ongoing innovation of its
industry leading banking platform will drive further operational
gains," Hudson said.
Investments in Digital and Mobile Have Already Borne Fruit,
Positioning Seacoast for Continued Value Creation
With respect to the Company's digital transformation strategy,
Hudson noted, "We are well underway in pioneering a business model
transformation that has already expanded Seacoast's digital
capabilities, lowering our reliance on capital intensive branches,
driving an improvement in customer satisfaction, and positioning
the Company for continued value creation in 2016. These investments
in digital and analytics capabilities are today reflected in our
outsized portfolio performance, as consumer loan growth from
cross-sell opportunities was up nearly 50% during 2015, driven by
nearly one-quarter of all consumer sales taking place outside of
the branch. Additionally, we have substantially increased the
mobile adoption rate of all online-enabled customers to 67% at
year-end 2015, which is well ahead of our community banking peer
group, as reported by FIS Global."
"Seacoast's industry leading customer growth, achieved both
organically and through acquisitions, has been carefully designed
with a conservative risk profile. Our top-ten lending relationships
total 39% of risk-based capital, representing an intentional
decline from 57% in 2011, and we have decreased our average
commercial loan size by 43% during the corresponding period,"
Hudson said.
New Board Directors
Herb Lurie, 55, was Senior
Managing Director and Chairman of the Financial Institutions Group
of Guggenheim Securities, and earlier helped found and lead the
financial institutions group at Merrill Lynch. One of the nation's
leading strategic advisors to financial institutions, Lurie has
completed scores of financial institution-related
transactions. He began his career as M&A and securities
attorney at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Lurie received an MA in
Clinical Psychology from Columbia
University in 2004, a JD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985, and a
dual BS in Finance and Economics from the University at Albany in 1982.
Tim Huval, 49, is the
Chief Human Resources Officer of Humana Inc., a leading health and
well-being company, where he serves as a member of the Management
Team and is responsible for all aspects of human resources and
business services. Prior to joining Humana, Huval spent 10 years at
Bank of America in multiple senior‐level roles, including Human
Resources executive and Chief Information Officer for Global Wealth
& Investment Management. While at Bank of America, Huval served
as chair of the Consumer Banking, Business Banking and Enterprise
Client Coverage Diversity & Inclusion Business Council. Huval
earned a master's degree in public administration from Brigham Young University, a bachelor's degree in
marketing from Weber State and an
associate degree in business management from Salt Lake Community College. He was also awarded an
honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Salt
Lake Community College.
About Seacoast Banking Corporation of Florida (NASDAQ: SBCF)
Seacoast
Banking Corporation of Florida is
one of the largest community banks headquartered in Florida with approximately $3.5 billion in assets and $2.8 billion in deposits as of December 31, 2015. The Company provides
integrated financial services including commercial and retail
banking, wealth management, and mortgage services to customers
through advanced banking solutions, 43 traditional branches of its
locally-branded wholly-owned subsidiary bank, Seacoast Bank, and
five commercial banking centers. Offices stretch from Ft. Lauderdale, Boca
Raton and West Palm Beach
north through the Space Coast of Florida, into Orlando, Central
Florida and Daytona Beach,
and west to Okeechobee and
surrounding counties. More information about the Company is
available at SeacoastBanking.com.
Cautionary Notice Regarding Forward-Looking
Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements"
within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and
Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including,
without limitation, statements about future financial and operating
results, cost savings, enhanced revenues, economic and
seasonal conditions in our markets, and improvements to reported
earnings that may be realized from cost controls and for
integration of banks that we have acquired, or expect to acquire,
as well as statements with respect to Seacoast's objectives,
expectations and intentions and other statements that are not
historical facts. Actual results may differ from those set
forth in the forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements include statements with respect to
our beliefs, plans, objectives, goals, expectations, anticipations,
estimates and intentions, and involve known and unknown risks,
uncertainties and other factors, which may be beyond our control,
and which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements
of Seacoast to be materially different from future results,
performance or achievements expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements. You should not expect us to update any
forward-looking statements.
You can identify these forward-looking statements through our
use of words such as "may," "will," "anticipate," "assume,"
"should," "support", "indicate," "would," "believe," "contemplate,"
"expect," "estimate," "continue," "further", "point to," "project,"
"could," "intend" or other similar words and expressions of the
future. These forward-looking statements may not be realized due to
a variety of factors, including, without limitation: the effects of
future economic and market conditions, including seasonality;
governmental monetary and fiscal policies, as well as legislative,
tax and regulatory changes; changes in accounting policies, rules
and practices; the risks of changes in interest rates on the level
and composition of deposits, loan demand, liquidity and the values
of loan collateral, securities, and interest sensitive assets and
liabilities; interest rate risks, sensitivities and the shape of
the yield curve; the effects of competition from other commercial
banks, thrifts, mortgage banking firms, consumer finance companies,
credit unions, securities brokerage firms, insurance companies,
money market and other mutual funds and other financial
institutions operating in our market areas and elsewhere, including
institutions operating regionally, nationally and internationally,
together with such competitors offering banking products and
services by mail, telephone, computer and the Internet; and the
failure of assumptions underlying the establishment of reserves for
possible loan losses. The risks of mergers and acquisitions,
include, without limitation: unexpected transaction costs,
including the costs of integrating operations; the risks that the
businesses will not be integrated successfully or that such
integration may be more difficult, time-consuming or costly than
expected; the potential failure to fully or timely realize expected
revenues and revenue synergies, including as the result of revenues
following the merger being lower than expected; the risk of deposit
and customer attrition; any changes in deposit mix; unexpected
operating and other costs, which may differ or change from
expectations; the risks of customer and employee loss and business
disruption, including, without limitation, as the result of
difficulties in maintaining relationships with employees; increased
competitive pressures and solicitations of customers by
competitors; as well as the difficulties and risks inherent with
entering new markets.
All written or oral forward-looking statements attributable
to us are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary
notice, including, without limitation, those risks and
uncertainties described in our annual report on Form 10-K for the
year ended December 31, 2015, under
"Special Cautionary Notice Regarding Forward-looking Statements"
and "Risk Factors", and otherwise in our SEC reports and filings.
Such reports are available upon request from the Company, or from
the Securities and Exchange Commission, including through the SEC's
Internet website at http://www.sec.gov.
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SOURCE Seacoast Banking Corporation of Florida