Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions). We will take our first question from Brent Christ with Fox-Pitt.
Brent Christ
Good afternoon.
John Turner
Hi Brent.
Brent Christ
A couple of questions. First in terms of the net interest margin, it looked like you guys obviously the margin I think held out may be a little bit better than what people were expecting and it looked like you added some securities in the quarter and reduced some short-term investment. Can you give us a sense of kind of what specifically you did and what you are buying and may be to the extent that that help boosting the margin a little bit this quarter?
John Turner
Okay. Let me just start with a comment or two on the banking side and then I'll go and ask Tom to talk more about the investment side of our business. Having been through this before, we pretty much were ready each time the Fed reduced rates and reduced our deposit rates basically about the same time the Fed reduced rates, we have experienced some help from the LIBOR situation as you are aware that should help. And in fact, that’s not something we knew to anticipate, but it's been a pleasant surprise.
The other thing that we are probably doing a little different this time, we’ve always tried to impose borrowers as rates go down to the level where they are now. This time, this cycle, we are having more success in doing that particularly on a real estate customers. The customers are glad to have the bankers in the market, continuing to put flat loans and liquidity and when we ask them to compensate us recently by way of a floor, we have met with some pretty good success there. Tom, you want to talk towards the investment portfolios?
Tom Callicutt
Sure. We did a little pre-investing early in the quarter. We had in looking forward at how our investments were rolling off as they do on a latter basis, we looked ahead and decided to invest a little ahead of that. And so that did help us pick up a little during the quarter. Obviously, I think bringing the deposit rates down as quickly as we did and managing that well and in the LIBOR situation that John mentioned certainly helped us more than that.
Brent Christ
Okay. So those would be the two biggest kind of benefits to the margins?
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