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Tidelands Bank expanding locally, along coast
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Since opening its doors in October 2003, Tidelands Bank has been enjoying a growth boom.
In three years, as of June, the Mount Pleasant-based community bank has seen its assets soar from $28.7 million to nearly $302 million, its deposits jump from $13.2 million to $250.3 million and its net loans skyrocket from $9.8 million to $242.7 million, according to the bank’s prospectus.
Additionally, the bank’s common stock was recently approved for listing on the NASDAQ Global Market. Tidelands Bank’s holding company, Tidelands Bancshares, trading under the symbol TDBK, reported its common stock was $15.05 per share on Oct. 13.
Tidelands Bank is also expanding. A 10,000-square-foot full-service branch is under construction in Summerville and a 5,000-square-foot branch will be going up in West Ashley.
And in Mount Pleasant’s Park West subdivision, Tidelands Bank plans to convert the sales center, which the bank owns, into a full-service branch early next year.
Add to these developments a full-service branch in Myrtle Beach and a proposed loan office in Hilton Head, and Tidelands Bank is on track to achieving its goal of establishing a strong community-banking footprint along coastal South Carolina, said Robert “Chip” Coffee Jr., the bank’s president and CEO.
“We’re growing faster than we ever anticipated,” Coffee said.
Community banks are known for their personal approach to banking and to customer service, Coffee said. Customers have easy access to the bank’s executives, including the president, who, like the other officers, tends to know clients by name and whose office is right there on the first floor for customers to see.
Tidelands Bank focuses on serving professionals, entrepreneurs, small-business owners and their family members, Coffee said.
Customers can get a loan approval relatively quickly because the bank’s executives are in-house, not out of town or out of state.
“When you do business with us, you’re eyeballing the decision makers,” Coffee said.
Community banks in general are doing well, said John “Buddy” Howard, president of Raleigh, N.C.-based Equity Research Services Inc., which analyzes community banks.
“There are two factors that distinguish between community banks that are doing OK and those that are doing really well: the markets they are in and the strengths of their management team and board of directors,” Howard explained.
Mount Pleasant is a high-growth area and Tidelands Bank’s executives have strong ties to the community, he added.
Other local community banks are benefiting from the Lowcountry’s population growth. Mount Pleasant-based Southcoast Community Bank, founded eight years ago, saw its assets rise from $412.9 million in 2005 to $512.9 million in 2006, according to a Southcoast Financial Corp. press statement. The bank has eight branches in the Lowcountry and next year will open a ninth across from Park West in Mount Pleasant.
Between June 2005 and June 2006, the Bank of South Carolina’s assets nudged upward from about $231.4 million to nearly $234 million, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Co. records. The nearly 20-year-old bank has four branches: in Charleston, Summerville, Mount Pleasant and West Ashley.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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