BUSINESS

The Equitable Bank plans to reorganize, raise up to $13.7 million in stock offering

Paul Gores

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wauwatosa-based The Equitable Bank plans to reorganize and sell stock.

The Equitable Bank, a Wauwatosa-based lender, plans to reorganize and raise as much as $13.7 million in a stock offering.

The Equitable has applied to regulators to form a mutual holding company, giving it a public stock for the first time. Under the restructuring plan, TEB Bancorp Inc. would offer up to 1,368,788 shares of stock at $10 each. Account-holders would have the first opportunity to buy the stock.

After the stock offering, the bank's Wisconsin-chartered mutual holding company would own a majority of the shares, and the stock would trade on the OTC Pink Market.

John Matter, chief executive of the bank, said Friday he couldn't comment on the plan in detail at this point of the application process.

"But I can share with you that we're very excited about this opportunity," Matter said.

In general, the proceeds from the stock offering would be used to grow the bank and do more lending.

To complete the stock offering, TEB Bancorp needs to sell a minimum of 879,750 shares.

Like many banks focused mainly on mortgage lending, The Equitable was hit hard by the foreclosure crisis and the Great Recession. Records from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. show The Equitable was profitable in only two of the last 10 calendar years, including 2017, when it posted net income of $78,000. Its worst calendar-year loss occurred in 2011, when it had a loss of $15.8 million.

In the first nine months of the bank's current fiscal year, The Equitable lost $602,000, regulatory documents show.

The Equitable Bank, which operates six full branches in southeast Wisconsin, was founded in 1927.

The Equitable is the second Milwaukee-area bank to apply recently to reorganize into a mutual holding company structure and sell stock.

PyraMax Bank, a longtime community lender based in Greenfield, is restructuring and plans to go public with a stock offering that could raise up to $32 million.