Southeast Banks' Q2 Earnings Preview: FHN, ANCX, FBMS

The Q2 earnings season for the banks kick-starts today with the release of the industry behemoth JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s (NYSE:JPM) results. Like the past few quarters, earnings expectations for the sector are not encouraging.

The banking sector continues to face global growth worries, lower demand for loans, uncertainty over the timing of the next Fed rate hike, low levels of client activities and volatility in oil prices. Further, the Brexit fallout also adds to the concerns.

Driven by these worries, investors fled to safe-haven assets like Treasury bonds, thereby pushing bond yields to record lows. Hence, such an interest rates backdrop will definitely hurt the banks’ profitability by putting additional pressure on net interest margin.

Nonetheless, banks of all regions are not equally vulnerable to the multitude of perils. In fact, economies of some of the regions look favorable for their resident banks. Hence, these banks might be able to deal with the broader issues better than others. One such region is the Southeast.

The economy of the Southeast region is dependent on tourism, automobile industry, technology firms and financial services. Moreover, the regional economy is showing signs of revival since the 2008 financial crisis. This placed the Southeast banks on a growth path with a rise in demand for loans.

Therefore, there might be a surprise in store for Southeast banking stocks this earnings season amid such a dismal scenario. Let’s have a look at the three Southeast banking stocks that are likely to announce their earnings tomorrow.

First Horizon National Corporation (NYSE:FHN) is slated to announce results before the market opens. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company witnessed upward revisions over the last 30 days. Also, our estimate of 23 cents per share for the upcoming release indicates a year-over-year rise of 3.54%.

Nonetheless, with an FIRST BCSH/MS Quote