open.substack.com
Preparing For HIFS Annual Meeting (Issue #58)
In preparation for the Hingham Institution For Savings (NASDAQ: HIFS — $395.51m) annual meeting this week I compiled some takeaways from their annual report. These past couple of years have been extraordinary for the bank. This has been acknowledged and seen as an outlier by the CEO and COO, Robert and Patrick Gaughen (respectively). This past year was less of a blow-the-doors-off fantastic year. Instead, Hingham along with their competitors felt the effects of net interest margin (NIM) compression. Now with the addition of the still recent SVB events the 2023 fiscal year will also most likely be a challenging one for all banks including Hingham. In this years letter the managers have already acknowledged this weak point and foresee another difficult year. That being said a ~14%* ROE in a difficult year for a bank is not too shabby.