Peoples and Planters look like a pair of aces.

• Position: Merger of banks Planters Corp., Peoples Bancorp.

Say "growth stock" and young, technology-oriented companies come to mind - ventures with futuristic-sounding names and products and double-digit revenue and earnings growth.

Get ready to expand that definition to include a bank with a name yanked from antiquity and a history rooted in North Carolina's agricultural economy.

Next month, assuming all regulatory hurdles are cleared, two Rocky Mount-based banks, 91-year-old Planters Corp. and 59-year-old Peoples Bancorporation, will merge to become Centura Banks. Centura - the name was concocted from Latin by a banking consultant may take some getting used to. But analysts who have taken a close look at the proposed deal already have become quite comfortable with what they've seen.

The likely cost savings and minimal branch duplication have prompted analysts at most regional securities houses to put their stamp of approval on the merger. They expect Centura to produce earnings growth well above the typical regional bank's. In short, the merged bank will do better than either would do separately. It's a case, they say, where one plus one will equal three.

The combination makes unbelievable strategic sense," says David Stumpt, an analyst with Wheat, First Securities in Richmond. "It's a wonder it wasn't done years ago."

The merger, Stumpt says, should allow the banks to become more profitable. "Overcapacity in the markets they are in, plus the overall competition, has not allowed them to be as profitable as they could be."

Bank executives are well-aware of that. They are convinced that the deal, if carried out properly, will increase shareholders' value. "[It] was the driving force of this merger," says Douglass Staff, Planters' vice chairman.

That, of course, is what every banker says about every merger.

But in this case, analysts say, the numbers back up the rhetoric. Most analysts expect Centura to generate earnings at a faster clip than other similar-sized North Carolina regionals such as BB&T, UCB, CCB and Southern National.

Stumpt, for example, sees earnings growth of 20 percent to 22 percent in 1991 and 1992. Interstate/ Johnson Lane is more conservative, figuring growth of 17 to 19.5 percent. Alex. Brown & Sons, the Baltimore brokerage, estimates earnings growth of upward of 30 percent in 1991.

Peoples and Planters are now the state's ninth- and 10th-largest banks. Peoples has $1.4 billion in assets and 78 branches; Planters has $1.2 billion in assets and 64 branches. Both banks got...