Home Bancshares Inc Company Profile

Home BancShares acquires, organizes and invests in community banks that serve attractive markets. Our community banking team is built around experienced bankers with strong local relationships. The Company was formed in 1998 by an investor group led by John W. Allison, our Chairman, and Robert H. “Bunny” Adcock, Jr., our Vice Chairman. After obtaining a bank charter, we established First State Bank in Conway, Arkansas, in 1999. We acquired Community Bank, Bank of Mountain View and Centennial Bank in 2003, 2005 and 2008, respectively. Home BancShares and its founders were also involved in the formation of Twin City Bank and Marine Bank, both of which we acquired in 2005. During 2008 and 2009, we merged all of our banks into one charter and adopted Centennial Bank as the common name. In 2010, we acquired six banks in Florida through Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) assisted transactions with loss share, including Old Southern Bank, Key West Bank, Coastal Community Bank, Bayside Savings Bank, Wakulla Bank and Gulf State Community Bank. In 2012, we acquired three banks headquartered in Florida including Vision Bank, Premier Bank and Heritage Bank of Florida (“Heritage”). Heritage was acquired through an FDIC-assisted transaction without loss share. In 2013, we acquired Liberty Bancshares, Inc. headquartered in Jonesboro, Arkansas. During 2014, we acquired Florida Traditions Bank headquartered in Dade City, Florida and Broward Financial Holdings, Inc. headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. During 2015, we acquired Doral Bank’s Florida Panhandle operations (“Doral Florida”), a pool of national commercial real estate loans, and Florida Business BancGroup, Inc., headquartered in Tampa, Florida. In connection with the acquisition of the pool of national commercial real estate loans, we opened a loan production office in New York City and created Centennial Commercial Finance Group (“Centennial CFG”).

We believe many individuals and businesses prefer banking with a locally managed community bank capable of providing flexibility and quick decisions. The execution of our community banking strategy has allowed us to rapidly build our network of banking operations through acquisitions. The following are the financial details concerning our acquisitions during the previous five years.

Strategic acquisitions – Strategic acquisitions have been a significant component of our historical growth strategy, and we believe properly priced bank acquisitions can continue to be a large part of our growth strategy. In the near term, our principal acquisition focus will be to continue to expand our presence in Arkansas, Florida and Alabama and into other contiguous markets through pursuing both non-FDIC-assisted and FDIC-assisted bank acquisitions, although we may expand into other areas if attractive financial opportunities in other market areas arise. We are continually evaluating potential bank acquisitions to determine what is in the best interests of our Company. Our goals in making these decisions are to maximize the return to our shareholders and to enhance our franchise.

Organic growth – We believe our current branch network provides us with the capacity to grow within our existing market areas. We also believe we are well positioned to attract new business and additional experienced personnel as a result of ongoing changes in our competitive markets. We believe the markets we entered into as a result of historical acquisitions provide us opportunities for organic growth as we now have a presence in several large markets where our market share has not previously been significant.

De novo branching – As opportunities arise, we will evaluate new (commonly referred to as de novo) branches in our current markets and in other attractive market areas.

Maintain strong credit quality – Credit quality is our first priority. We employ a set of credit standards designed to ensure the proper management of credit risk. Our management team plays an active role in monitoring compliance with these credit standards in the different communities served by Centennial Bank. We have a centralized loan review process, which we believe enables us to take prompt action on potential problem loans. During the past few years we have taken an aggressive approach to resolving problem loans, including those problem loans acquired in the FDIC-assisted and non-FDIC-assisted acquisitions. We are committed to maintaining high credit quality standards.

Continue to improve profitability – We will continue to strive to improve our profitability and achieve high performance ratios as we continue to utilize the available capacity of branches and employees. During 2015, we acquired Doral Florida and FBBI and converted them into our operating systems. In addition, upon conversion, we closed all five Doral Florida branch locations as we already operated 29 branch locations in the Florida Panhandle. These conversions and closures will provide tremendous opportunities for improved profitably as a result of cost savings because of the economies of scale for the combined companies. Additionally, during 2015, we created Centennial CFG who is building out a national lending platform focusing on commercial real estate plus commercial and industrial loans. As we work out the problem loans in our special assets department, we plan to emphasize business development and relationship enhancement in lending and retail areas in these newly acquired markets. Our core efficiency ratio has improved from 59.4% for the year ended 2008 to 39.5% for the year ended 2015. Core efficiency ratio is calculated by dividing non-interest expense less amortization of core deposit intangibles by the sum of net interest income on a tax equivalent basis and non-interest income excluding non-fundamental items such as merger expenses and/or gain and losses. These improvements in operating efficiency are being driven by, among other factors, increasing revenue from organic loan growth, improving our cost savings from the acquisitions, implementing our efficiency study initiatives, streamlining the processes in our lending and retail operations and improving our purchasing power.

Attract and motivate experienced bankers – We believe a major factor in our success has been our ability to attract and motivate bankers who have experience in and knowledge of their local communities. Historically, our hiring and retaining experienced relationship bankers has been integral to our ability to grow quickly when entering new markets. Specifically, as a result of the creation of Centennial CFG, we were able to hire a group of experienced lenders with knowledge of the New York business climate and national commercial lending platforms, which presents us with a tremendous opportunity for loan growth.

Maintain a “fortress” balance sheet – We intend to maintain a strong balance sheet through a focus on four key governing principles: (1) maintain solid asset quality; (2) remain well-capitalized; (3) pursue high performance metrics including return on tangible equity (ROTE), return on assets (ROA), efficiency ratio and net interest margin; and (4) retain liquidity at the bank holding company level that can be utilized should attractive acquisition opportunities be identified or for internal capital needs. We strive to maintain capital levels above the regulatory capital requirements through our focus on these governing principles, which historically has allowed us to take advantage of acquisition opportunities as they become available without the need for additional capital.