Brady Matthew Gailey
Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods, Inc., Research Division
Going back to the loan growth in the 5%, 6%, once TCBI is in the mix, did you think that, that loan growth level will stay about the same or will it change from that level?
David R. Brooks
Chairman, President and CEO
Well, I think, for the regional banking franchise, which is kind of the terminology we’re using for the legacy, your independent franchise, the IBTX regional banking model, I think it’s going to — that we’re safe there. And in fact, we intend to expand and add new teams and we’re going to be going to San Antonio via this merger. And so we’re encouraged actually that we can hire teams and step up that growth in post-merger for the regional bank.
But the other — the middle market and corporate and some of the business lines and verticals at Texas Capital, we believe, are very encouraged about their growth prospects as well. In terms of the overall corporation, Brady, a lot of that’s going to come down to what the final business mix is and how we put together thego-forward business model. And so that will inform a little bit what that growth rate is. But from a high level, we’re going to be a growth company, Brady. That’s one of the things as we — one of the objectives as we’re building out thisgo-forward business model is that we’re in great markets. We should be able to grow. We are going to grow. Whether it’s 5%, 6% or 8%, 10% or what those numbers are, we’ll be able to get more clarity once we have the — once we can paint the road map to exactly where we’re going over the next 2 years, then I think we can give better guidance or not guidance. If the lawyers are listening, I didn’t say guidance, but we’ll be able to give a clear picture of what we think about the growth prospects of the pro forma company once we get a little more clarity around exactly what that looks like.
Brady Matthew Gailey
Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods, Inc., Research Division
All right. That’s helpful. And then, David, I have youryear-end 2020 tangible book value with TCBI at about $40, that puts your stock at 1.3x tangible, which doesn’t seem right for a company that’s doing a high-teens return on tangible common equity. So my question is on the buyback. Your stock is notably inexpensive. I know that buyback can be tough when you have a deal pending, but is there the opportunity for you guys to buyback stock before the TCBI deal closes? And if not, if the stock stays as cheap post closing, do you think you’ll be active on the buyback front?
David R. Brooks
Chairman, President and CEO
Well, I will agree with you, Brady, that we think the stock price is dislocated, but I don’t have a PhD and whatever you have to have to figure that out. So I’m not going to speculate on exactly why that is. We remain extremely confident in our model, extremely confident in what we’ve told the market regarding this merger and what the performance of our company is going to be in the short and midterm. That said, yes, we have a policy, as you know, of taking excess capital and returning it to the shareholders via dividends and a buyback program. And so that’s a part of this whole equation, Brady, as we think about thego-forward company. Depending on what the pro forma size is of the company once we close on the transaction and get everything adjusted the way we want it to over the next 6 to 18 months, I do expect that there’s going to be some significant cash flow coming off the combined organization that can be used for stock buybacks.
And to the extent that our balance sheet is slightly smaller, that would also free up capital. And as you allude to, at these kinds of prices, we’ve never seen our stock trade at these kinds of prospective multiples, and we’ll be very aggressive in acquiring back our stock.