The Bank Holdings raises capital to finance acquisition

As it begins to see income from two smaller acquisitions, the parent company of Nevada Security Bank has completed a major step toward completion of a substantially bigger deal.

The Bank Holdings, a publicly held company based in Reno, said last week it raised $11.5 million through a private offering of its common stock to help finance its purchase of Northern Nevada Bank.

The 678,740 newly issued shares were priced at $17. The stock was trading at $17.94 last week.

The Bank Holdings said most of the money it raised will be used to finance the cash portion of its $36.1 million acquisition of Northern Nevada Bank. That deal, which awaits regulatory approval, is scheduled to close in the fourth quarter.

Meanwhile, The Bank Holdings said two companies that it acquired earlier this year are beginning to affect the company's bottom line.

The two acquisitions Rocky Mountain Exchange of Bozeman, Mont., and Granite Exchange of Roseville, Calif. specialize in handling so-called "1031 exchanges" for real estate investors.

The fees generated by the two companies helped The Bank Holdings boost its non-interest income to $251,000 during the second quarter compared with $97,000 a year earlier.

But the biggest boost to the company's earnings during the quarter came from a 56 percent increase in the revenue generated by its loan portfolio.

Its loans totaled $280.4 million on June 30 and generated net interest income of $3.8 million. (That's the spread between the amount the company paid to attract deposits and the amount it collected from borrowers.)

A year earlier, the company reported net interest income of $2.3 million on a loan portfolio that totaled $201.8 million.

Hal Giomi, chief executive officer of The Bank Holdings, noted that the company has no loans that are 30 days past due and didn't charge off any bad loans during the second quarter.

Its earnings for the first half of this year totaled $645,000 compared with $452,000 a year earlier.