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Insider Weekends: Frank B. Holding, Jr. Purchases First Citizens’ Shares

  • February 5, 2023

When sifting through insider purchases to add to our daily Event Driven Monitor, we found that many of the insider purchases this week came from regional banks. We have also seen a lot of buyback announcements by regional banks.

One of these banks, First Citizens BancShares (FCNCA), is a familiar name for us. First Citizens Bancshares was founded in 1898, and from 1935 onwards, has been led by members of Robert P. Holding’s family. Over a decade ago, we used to see Frank B. Holding consistently buy shares and actually wrote about his purchases in a 2012 Focus Article. Mr. Holding Sr. unfortunately passed away in 2018, but since then his son, Frank B. Holding Jr., has continued to buy shares of the company.

Frank B. Holding, Jr. currently serves as Chairman and CEO of the company, and made his first purchase of First Citizens of 2023 this week, acquiring 1,020 shares for a total of $736,960. It’s been a little over 6 months since Mr. Holding Jr.’s last purchase. Market conditions during 2022 were generally terrible, but since his well-timed purchase last year, the stock has risen by about 24%. Given Mr. Holding’s history of well-timed purchases, we thought a closer look at the company was warranted.

First Citizens has an incredibly long history as a regional bank, and was founded and is based in North Carolina. The company now has over 550 branches across 22 different states. First Citizens has made a series of acquisitions of smaller banks in the past, but on January 3rd, 2022, they made their largest acquisition when they purchased CIT Group.

When looking at the company’s Q4 2022 results, it is difficult to compare the company properly on a YoY basis given that the CIT merger changed its financial reporting structure. First Citizens chose to exit $1.2 billion of Bank Owned Life Insurance policies, causing a tax charge of $55 million, which impacted Q4 2022 results. Through 2022, First Citizens repurchased $1.5 million Class A common shares during Q3 and Q4. Despite the difficult financial year and general economic conditions, loans grew by 8.5% or by $5.6 billion in 2022. Net revenue for the year turned out to be $5.08 billion and net income was $1.09 billion.

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