Southside Bancshares, Inc. Increases the Cash Dividend and Declares Cash Dividend and Stock Dividend

TYLER, Texas, May 04, 2017 -- The Board of Directors of Southside Bancshares, Inc., (NASDAQ:SBSI), parent company of Southside Bank approved an increase to the regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.03 to $0.28 per common share and declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.28 per common share.  The cash dividend is payable to common stock shareholders of record May 18, 2017 and is scheduled for payment on June 1, 2017.  In a separate motion, the Board of Directors declared a 2.5% common stock dividend payable to common shareholders of record May 30, 2017.  The common stock dividend is scheduled for payment on June 27, 2017.

“The increase in the quarterly cash dividend, combined with the 2.5% common stock dividend represents a 14.5% increase in the cash dividend for our shareholders,” stated Lee R. Gibson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Southside Bancshares, Inc.  “We are pleased that our success has allowed us to increase the portion we are able to return to our shareholders.”

About Southside Bancshares, Inc.

Southside Bancshares, Inc. is a bank holding company with approximately $5.66 billion in assets that owns 100% of Southside Bank.  Southside Bank currently has 60 banking centers in Texas and operates a network of over 70 ATMs.

To learn more about Southside Bancshares, Inc., please visit our investor relations website at www.southside.com/about/investor-relations.  Our investor relations site provides a detailed overview of our activities, financial information and historical stock price data.  To receive e-mail notification of company news, events and stock activity, please register on the E-mail Notification portion of the website.  Questions or comments may be directed to Julie Shamburger at (903) 531-7134, or [email protected].

Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements of other than historical fact that are contained in this document and in other written material, press releases and oral statements issued by or on behalf of the Company may be considered to be “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of and subject to the safe harbor protections of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, nor should they be relied upon as representing management’s views as of any subsequent date.  These statements may include words such as “expect,” “estimate,” “project,” “anticipate,” “appear,” “believe,” “could,” “should,” “may,” “likely,” “intend,” “probability,” “risk,” “target,” “objective,” “plans,” “potential,” and similar expressions.  Forward-looking statements are statements with respect to the Company’s beliefs, plans, expectations, objectives, goals, anticipations, assumptions and estimates about the Company's future performance and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements.  For example, discussions about trends in asset quality, capital, liquidity, the pace of loan and revenue growth, the Company's ability to sell nonperforming assets, expense reductions, the benefits of the Share Repurchase Plan, planned operational efficiencies, earnings and certain market risk disclosures, including the impact of interest rates and other economic factors, are based upon information presently available to management and are dependent on choices about key model characteristics and assumptions and are subject to various limitations.  By their nature, certain of the market risk disclosures are only estimates and could be materially different from what actually occurs in the future.

Additional information concerning the Company and its business, including additional factors that could materially affect the Company’s financial results, is included in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, under “Forward-Looking Information” and Item 1A.  “Risk Factors,” and in the Company’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The Company disclaims any obligation to update any factors or to announce publicly the result of revisions to any of the forward-looking statements included herein to reflect future events or developments.