Tennessee’s Pinnacle, FirstBank Report Improved First Quarter Results Despite Banking Tumult

Chattanooga Times Free Press

Two of Tennessee’s biggest banks reported improved results in the first three months of the year despite rising interest rates and growing fears of a recession spurred by the failure last month of Silicon Valley and Signature banks.

Pinnacle Bank, the $31.2 billion-deposit bank headquartered in Nashville and the fourth biggest bank operating in Chattanooga, said Monday its net income grew by 6.7% from a year ago to $1.76 per share.

FirstBank in Tennessee, which operates the sixth biggest bank in Chattanooga and has deposits of more than $9.6 billion, grew its deposits by 12.2% over the past year and reported an increase in first quarter adjusted net income of 5.4% to $36.4 million, or 78 cents per share.

“Never before has the depth, sustainability and durability of our business model proven itself as it has over the past several weeks,” Pinnacle CEO M. Terry Turner said in a report issued Monday. “Our disciplined execution and the depth of client loyalty that we have built over the last two decades enabled us not only to retain substantially all of our clients, but to grow our clients’ deposits at an annualized growth rate of 9.6 percent during the first quarter, a portion of which came after the two bank failures.”

The results for the first three months of the year reported Monday by FB Financial Corp, the parent company of First Bank, also were up from a year ago. Net interest margins shrank from a year ago, but FB Financial President Christopher Holmes said FirstBank has been preparing its balance sheet to cope “with increasing interest rates, slower economic growth, a stubbornly high rate of inflation and shrinking liquidity.

“We began using a mantra of liquidity, credit and capital in the first half of 2022 and that has resulted in the company being well positioned for the current banking environment,” Holmes said in a statement Monday. “Our liquidity position, credit quality metrics and capital ratios all improved during the quarter.”

— Compiled by Dave Flessner

 File photo / FirstBank’s downtown Chattanooga office at 4th and Chestnut streets is one of two local branches.