Bank of the Ozarks Inc. added a member to its board of directors on Monday at its annual shareholders meeting, raising the Little Rock company's board membership to 16 and increasing its female board membership to 25 percent.
After that shareholder vote and three others, company Chairman and CEO George Gleason presented a review of the company's 2016 performance and a look at 2017 based on its first-quarter performance.
"We expect another year of excellent growth," he told shareholders, meeting at the Capital Hotel in downtown Little Rock.
The new board member is Kathleen Franklin, the global ethics and compliance strategy leader for Sony Group. Before joining Sony, Franklin was a partner in the law firm of Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP of New York where she advised clients on issues relating to mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, corporate governance and crisis management. She also is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
At the meeting, shareholders also approved a change to the company's nonemployee director stock plan to increase the amount of equity compensation and the number of shares available under the plan. The board recommended the change after a study by a compensation consultant found that Bank of the Ozarks' stock compensation paid to its nonemployee directors ranked below the 20th percentile for its peer group.
The annual grant was raised from shares of common stock worth $35,000 to an annual grant of shares worth $50,000. The number of shares reserved for the awards was increased from 50,000 to 100,000.
The shareholders also approved the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as independent auditors for the company and approved Bank of the Ozarks' executive officers' compensation.
Top Performer
In his presentation to shareholders, Gleason noted that Bank of the Ozarks had been named the No. 1 performer in its size group for the past seven years by industry observers like the ABA Banking Journal, S&P Global Market Intelligence and Bank Director Magazine.
And in S&P Global Market Intelligence's 2016 regional bank performance ranking, Bank of the Ozarks came in at No. 1. S&P Global Market Intelligence ranked banks on six financial metrics: return on average tangible common equity, net charge-offs as a percentage of average loans, adjusted Texas ratio, efficiency ratio, net interest margin and loan growth.
In April, Bank of the Ozarks reported that net income for the first quarter was a record $89.2 million, up 73 percent from the same quarter last year. Total assets as of the quarter's end were $19.2 billion.
The company nearly doubled its assets last year, to almost $19 billion, by acquiring Community & Southern Bank of Atlanta and C1 Bank of St. Petersburg, Florida.
Gleason pointed in particular to the bank's asset quality and efficiency ratio (the amount of overhead required to produce $1 of revenue). Its asset quality is 65 percent better than the industry average, he said, and its efficiency ratio in 2016 was 35.8, with a 35 ratio for the first quarter of 2017. Gleason said the bank was working to drive its efficiency ratio over the next few years to 30, or 30 cents spent for every $1 in revenue.
Bank of the Ozarks operates in more than 40 states and as of April 11, had 250 offices in nine states.
Gleason also noted that the company would be celebrating its 20th anniversary as a public company on July 17. Bank of the Ozarks has delivered on returns to shareholders, he said, having increased cash dividends every year since going public. And its compound annual growth rate of 22.73 percent since its debut as a public company has far exceeded market indexes, such as the S&P 400 Mid Cap Index (10.66 percent) and the Nasdaq Financial Index (4.63 percent), he said.