Primis in Va. to sell securities, enter sale-leaseback deal for branches

Primis Financial in McLean, Va., entered into a sale-leaseback transaction for 18 branches.

The $4 billion-asset company said in a press release that it sold the locations to MountainSeed for a pretax gain of $50 million.

Separately, Primis plans to sell $144 million of securities at a pretax loss of $14.8 million. About $50 million of the proceeds will fund near-term loan growth, with the rest reinvested in higher-yielding securities. The move should improve annual pretax earnings by $4.3 million.

Primis also plans to reduce outstanding subordinated debt by roughly $27 million and restructure lower-yielding bank-owned life insurance assets into higher-yielding policies, while funding incremental required policies. The one-time costs associated with the BOLI moves are expected to be less than $100,000, while annual earnings improvement is estimated at $1.2 million.

This transaction “is the finishing touch on a great year of repositioning the company,” Dennis Zember Jr., Primis’ president and CEO, said in the release.

“We have rebuilt tangible book value and capital levels by realizing some embedded gains and strengthened the earnings outlook materially with 12 months of profitable growth, and now this restructure,” he added. “Because of this transaction, we are starting 2026 with the capital we need to support several mature strategies that are growing revenue with very little operating expense burden.”