2023 Community Bank Case Study Competition Journal

2023 COMMUNITY BANK CASE STUDY COMPETITION

Gratz Bank brought to LINK were, and still are currently, made out to Amish clients that live in that region. While there was only a 30% growth in 2022, that was because growth was purely organic. We can assume another big jump in 2023, as long as the Partners Bank merger closes accordingly in Q3 ‘23, due to their loan portfolio of $1,171,581M at year end 2022. With that, LINKBANK’s portfolio will be more than doubled along with combined assets coming to $3 billion. Asset Growth

Partners Bancorp., LINKBANK’s pro forma assets in 2023 reach $2.8 billion. Figure 3 shows the asset growth of LINKBANK compared with The Gratz Bank that it acquired in 2021, with the combined entity’s total assets shown starting in 2021, and the pro forma assets post-merger in 2023. While the initial investor presentation had total assets as $1.2B for LINK and $1.6B for Partners, as of mid April, according to CEO, Andrew Samuel, Partners’ total assets is approximately $1.7B, and figures were updated accordingly. Looking at pro forma, he expects

In 2018, LINKBANK’s total assets were $83 million. In 2019 and 2020, the bank grew total assets organically to $233 million and $424 million, accumulating asset growth of 180% a year after inception, and 81.9% the following year. After the completion of the reverse acquisition of The Gratz Bank in 2021, the combined entity had assets of $920 million, another 117% jump in YoY growth. In the first full year of operations after the combination, LINKBANK grew to $1.15 billion in total assets at year-end, growing organically by 25.2% YoY. Upon completion of the merger of equals with

Figure 3: YoY Asset Growth

$3,000,000

$2,500,000

$2,000,000

$1,500,000

$1,000,000

$500,000

$0

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023*

LINKBANK

The Gratz Bank

Partners Bancorp

Figure 4: % Earning Assets

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0% 90.0% 100.0%

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

44