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Presentation

Operator: Good morning. My name is Audra, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SouthState Bank Corporation First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to William Matthews, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

William Matthews: Good morning. Welcome to SouthState’s First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. This is Will Matthews, and I’m here with John Corbett, Steve Young and Jeremy Lucas. We’ll follow our pattern of brief remarks followed by Q&A. I’ll refer you to the earnings release and investor presentation under the Investor Relations tab of our website. Before we begin our remarks, I want to remind you that comments we make may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws and regulations. Any such forward-looking statements we may make are subject to the safe harbor rules. Please review the forward-looking disclaimer and safe harbor language in the press release and presentation for more information about our forward-looking statements and risks and uncertainties which may affect us. Now I’ll turn the call over to you, John.

John Corbett: Thank you, Will. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. For the quarter, SouthState delivered a return on assets of 1.37% and a return on tangible common equity of 17.6%. As we progress through 2026, our 4 main priorities are: first, to expand our commercial banking sales force; second, to deliver meaningful organic growth; third, to systematically retire shares at an attractive valuation; and fourth, to learn how to leverage the benefits of artificial intelligence and implemented throughout the company. We’re making good progress on all 4 fronts. As far as recruiting, we’re now in a yield curve environment that is more favorable to balance sheet growth. And with the consolidation disruption occurring throughout our markets, we see an opportunity to expand our commercial banking team by 10% to 15% in the next couple of years.

In the last 6 months alone, our division presidents were successful in attracting and growing our commercial banking team by about 7%. We’re going to continue to be opportunistic, but based upon the rapid success we may slow the pace of hiring in the next few months. Second, for organic loan growth, loan pipelines have grown 50% since last summer, and that’s resulted in solid annualized loan growth of 8% in the fourth quarter and then another 7.5% loan growth in the first quarter. Pipelines grew significantly again in the first quarter, which gives us confidence moving forward. Our previous loan growth guidance for 2026 called for mid- to upper single-digit growth this year. There’s a decent chance that we could end up on the higher end of our guidance.

The biggest highlight by far has been the success in Texas and Colorado. On a year-over-year comparison, loan production in those 2 states have more than doubled from $500 million in the first quarter of ’25 to $1.1 billion in the first quarter of ’26. And Houston, specifically, experienced the highest loan growth of any market in the entire company this quarter. Third, on stock buybacks. We’ve repurchased nearly 4% of our shares outstanding since the beginning of the third quarter at an average price of $95.28. We continue to see this as an attractive use of excess capital at a time when bank valuations seem, at least to us, disconnected from fundamental performance and intrinsic value. And then fourth, we’re enthusiastically embracing the potential for artificial intelligence.

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We’re deploying more and more Copilot licenses and training our bankers at the individual user level. We’re researching and beginning to deploy AI tools from our major software providers at the department level. And we’re looking for ways to reengineer processes between departments at the enterprise level. More to come, but we’re pleased with the way the entire organization is embracing these new tools with the goal of improving our speed and scalability, speed for improved customer service and then scalability for efficiency and shareholder returns. Before I turn it over to Will, I’ll point out that we’ve refreshed some of the slides in our deck to highlight the value proposition of being a SouthState shareholder. Our story hasn’t changed and it isn’t complicated.

We’re building a premier deposit franchise and we’re doing it in the fastest-growing markets in the United States. We adhere to a geographic and local market leadership business model. It’s a model that empowers our division presidents to tailor their team, products and pricing to deliver remarkable service to their unique local community. And at the same time, an incentive system built on geographic profitability that instills a CEO and shareholder mindset. This is a model that produces durable results that have outperformed our peers on deposit cost, asset quality and overall returns. And the outperformance is consistent and durable over the last year, over the last 5 years, and over the last 20 years, ultimately leading to a top quartile shareholder return over multiple cycles.

Will, I’ll turn it back over to you to walk through the details on the quarter.

William Matthews: Thanks, John. Our net interest margin of 3.79% was just below our guidance of 3.80% to 3.90%. The slight miss was primarily a result of deposit costs being a few basis points above our expectation in spite of the 6 basis point improvement from the prior quarter. Loan yields of [ 5 96 ] were slightly below our new loan production coupons of [ 6 09 ] for the quarter and accretion of $38.8 million was in line with expectations and $11.5 million below Q4 levels. Excluding accretion, our NIM was up 1 basis point. Net interest income of $562 million was down $19 million from Q4 with the day count impact being $12.6 million of that difference. As John noted, we had another good loan growth quarter with loans growing $896 million, a 7.5% annualized growth rate.

Average loans grew at a 6.5% annualized rate. Our Texas and Colorado team led the company in loan growth, and every banking group within the company grew loans in the first quarter. We have some optimism about continuing loan growth as our pipeline at quarter end was up 33% compared with year-end. Noninterest income of $100 million was at the high end of our range of 55 to 60 basis points guidance. We had a solid quarter in capital markets and wealth with seasonally lighter deposit fees, offset by stronger mortgage revenue, which was aided by an increase in the MSR asset value net of the hedge. NIE of $359.5 million was in line with expectations. Looking ahead, we have no changes to our NIE guidance for the remainder of the year. But if we have greater success in our recruiting efforts and we’ve been pleased with our success thus far, NIE could, of course, move up somewhat.

Net charge-offs of $10 million represented a 9 basis point annualized rate for the quarter, and this amount was matched by our provision for credit losses. Nonaccrual and substandard loans were down slightly. Payment performance remains very good, and we continue to feel good about our credit quality. Turning to capital. We repurchased 1.5 million shares in the quarter at a weighted average price of [ $100.84 ]. This makes a total of 3.5 million shares repurchased in the last 2 quarters. And our share count was 97.9 million shares at quarter end, down from 101.5 million shares a year prior. Like last year’s fourth quarter, the first quarter payout ratio was higher than we expect to maintain over the long term, but we thought it is an opportune time to be more active.

Our strong loan pipeline and recruiting success give us some optimism, we’ll need to retain capital to support healthy growth. Even with a higher capital return posture and a 7.5% annualized loan growth in the quarter, capital levels remained very healthy. CET1 ended at 11.3%. Our TCE was 8.64%, and our tangible book value per share ended at $56.90. I’ll point out that our TBV per share is up almost $7 or 14% and above the year ago levels, and our TCE ratio is up 39 basis points from March 2025, even with our higher capital return activity over the last couple of quarters. Operator, we’ll now take questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] We’ll go first to Catherine Mealor at KBW.

Catherine Mealor: I wanted if you could start on the margin. Will, you talked about how the margins fell a little bit below the range just on deposit costs. Curious if you still think that 3.80% to 3.90% range is fair for the year or if deposit pressures are bringing that a little bit lower than the range?

Stephen Young: Sure. Thanks, Catherine. This is Steve. Let me kind of walk through our various assumptions and kind of update them versus last quarter. So to your point, yes, we were — we thought that the margin would start out in the low 3.80s for the first quarter and trend higher during the year, it looks like we missed that by a couple of basis points at the start of the year. If you look at the 4 things that really make up that guidance and our forecast or the level of interest-earning assets, the rate forecast what our loan accretion forecast is in deposit costs. So those 4 things. And if you look at the interest-earning assets, I think we forecasted for the first quarter, we’d be between [ $60 billion and $60.5 billion ].

I think we ended up at [ $60.2 billion ] so right in the middle of that. We said for the year that our interest-earning assets would average somewhere in the $61 billion to $62 billion range. And I think where we are with that, we think that it’s a potential — we’re kind of reiterating that, but we do think that the loan growth might drive that slightly higher. A little bit too early to tell, but that it could — interest-earning assets could end the year in the $63 billion, $64 billion range relative to the fourth quarter, but the average is probably going to be more on the high end of what we were thinking. As it relates to rate forecast, last quarter, we thought that there would be 3 rate cuts coming into 2026. And it looks like right now, the market is [ sub-0 ] relative to the conflict and so on.

I think the 2-year and the 5-year treasury rates were up 40 basis points from the lows earlier this quarter. So we’ve now taken out the rate cuts in our forecast. On loan accretion, which is our third one, is we forecasted $125 million for the full year of ’26, and there’s really no change to that coming in line with what we had expected. And then the last one was on deposit costs and our original deposit beta forecast was 27%. And then for — it looks like we came in around 20% for the quarter. So if you kind of go back and look at the movie, I think for the first 100 basis points of cuts, we got 24, we had a 38% beta. And then the last 75 basis points, we had a 20% beta. So you combine it all together, we’ve had a 30% beta on 175 basis points.

But as we look forward and think about the deposit environment that we’re at in the flat environment with our growth trajectory, we think that the deposit cost will be in the mid-170s versus our early forecast to be in the low mid-170s. So based on all these assumptions, we’d expect NIM to be in the 3.75% to 3.80% range. If the mid — if growth is in the mid-single digits, we would expect NIM to be on the high end of the range. And if growth is as we expect, a little bit higher in the high single digit, we’d expect the NIM to be on the lower end of the range with net interest income higher. So hopefully, that helps tell you all the different assumptions.

Catherine Mealor: Yes, that’s great. And then just kind of take us in big picture. I mean it feels like this is growth related, right? So as you just kind of think about your model and your forecast, is there a big change in NII dollars? Or is it more of earning assets, it’s higher and that’s coming with a little bit of a lower margin, but that you’re at the same place in terms of dollars?

Stephen Young: Yes. I think if you look at our models in 2026 because growth takes a while to accelerate and get into the budget ’26, the NIM is, if you have lower NIM in the short run, it gets you lower NII dollars to ’26. But if you look at 2027, it all sort of catches up with higher growth. So that’s kind of the way I would describe the net interest income dollars.

Operator: We’ll move next to John McDonald at Truist Securities.

John McDonald: Great. I was hoping you could drill down a little bit in terms of what you’re seeing on the loan growth front? What gives you confidence that you might be able to see the high end there? And kind of just drill down a little bit more in terms of kind of gross production versus payoffs and utilization.

John Corbett: John, it’s John Corbett. The production — loan production that we had in the first quarter was very similar to the fourth quarter, which that was a record for us, almost $4 billion. But a lot of the growth came in the latter part of the quarter. We wound up at 7.5% loan growth. Last quarter was 8%. And really, the growth was broad-based, both from the type of loan we are doing and also the geography. I mean, investor CRE was up 9%, C&I is up 9%, single-family residential owner occupied, up mid-single digits. And from a geography standpoint, I think Will said in his opening remarks, every single geography grew led by Texas and Colorado, which was the thing that puts a smile on our face as we worked through the integration last year.

Following Texas and Colorado at $1.1 billion, Florida and South Carolina each did about $640 million of production. Greenville was the strongest in South Carolina and as I mentioned earlier, Houston had the highest production in the entire company. But winding the clock forward even with the $3.8 billion in production, we did not drain the pipeline. The pipeline stayed full, and we actually grew the pipeline 33%. So it went up to $6.4 billion from the end of the year was at $4.8 billion. A lot of that’s happening in Florida and Texas. So just with the momentum we’re seeing with the pipeline growth, we think we can keep this momentum going, and we think we could be in the upper end of our guidance that we gave you previously.

John McDonald: Okay. Great. And then just a follow-up on the deposit costs. Can you give us a little more color on what you’re seeing in terms of competitive dynamics and maybe what you’re doing in terms of deposit mix any promotional strategies? And just what are the wildcards around the deposit cost for this year?

Stephen Young: Sure. Yes, John, this is Steve. Yes, a couple of things on that. We look at how we — the new money that we raised during the quarter and we look at the money market rates as well as the CD rates. And so this quarter, we raised about $400 million in new money at the new money market rate at 2.68%. And our new and renewed CDs came in at 3.69%. So that’s sort of where money is coming in. We also if you exclude the seasonal runoff of public funds, our customer deposits actually grew at 7%, about $850 million. And most of that was in the business area, it was up 10%. So a lot of treasury management and so on. So I think that’s probably where we’re continuing to lean in. From a geography perspective, if you look at our deposit franchise, because we run a decentralized P&L model, we track all of the different divisions and banking groups together.

And the deposit cost in the legacy Southeast footprint that we’ve had is in the mid-140s and then in Texas and Colorado, obviously had a great quarter relative to growth. But the deposit costs are in around the 210 range. And so we think over time, there’s going to be an opportunity to lower these with the addition of treasury management, retail and small business products, but that just takes time, but we think there is some opportunity there over time. And the balancing act is deposit growth versus profitability. And so we’re tweaking dials around that. The last thing I would say about deposits — I will tell you that back to the way that the interest rate curve increased during the quarter. We did see more competition towards the end of the quarter.

And so our new money market rates started the quarter in the 240 range and ended somewhere in the 3% range. So I think what that’s telling you until we can sort of get a little pat on rates to come back down, I think we’ll have opportunity on the deposit side. But right now, I think it’s just a tough environment, as you know.

Operator: We’ll move next to Stephen Scouten at Piper Sandler.

Stephen Scouten: One other question maybe on the NIM front. It’s just — the change in the guidance, how much of that would you say is related to that last comment you made about the progression of deposit competition versus removing that 3 cuts. I think at 1 point, it was maybe 1 to 2 basis points of help for every 25 bps, but I think that had been diminished over time. So just kind of wondering the puts and takes…

Stephen Young: Yes, I think it’s probably half and half. So I mean, I think the 2 things driving a little bit the NIM lower between 3.75% and 3.80% versus 3.80%, 3.90%. There’s probably things intact. One is, I think, our view of growth versus what we originally given you. So that’s probably half of it. And probably the other half is the deposit competition higher than we — is what we expected. And so the question is, when we got down to the final mile on the deposit beta getting from 20% to 27%, rate went up toward the end of the quarter. And so I would assume at some point when we get back to a rate cutting cycle, that will ease off and we’ll be able to get some of that, particularly in some of the new markets. But that would be kind of how I would characterize it, if that’s helpful.

Stephen Scouten: Extremely helpful. And then maybe digging into the hiring plans and activity a little bit more. Obviously, you put that as your kind of #1 strategic goal, I think, in the presentation. So can we get an update on what that number was this quarter? I think it was [ 26 ] last quarter? And then kind of if you continue to be focused more on Texas, Colorado, maybe the newer IBTX markets and maybe even the Nashville market, which I think was a newer entrants for you guys?

John Corbett: Yes, we kind of kicked off the initiatives, Stephen, at the beginning of the third quarter to expand the commercial banking sales force by like 10% to 15% in the next couple of years. And this is the kind of thing you just got to be opportunistic about it. It’s not going to happen on a straight line. But the team geared up. They built a recruiting pipeline with a couple of hundred folks in there. And we’ve grown the commercial banking team specifically by 7% from October 1 to March 31. Most of that growth, the net growth of the team occurred in Texas and Colorado. Dan Strodl and the team have done a great job carrying the brand and the flag out there. That’s an area I’d probably look to them to integrate, assimilate the team and maybe not grow too far too fast.

But I would like to see our team in the legacy Southeast markets continue to take advantage of that growth. So I think maybe by the end of the year, when we end the — I guess, it would be the third quarter for 4 straight quarters, maybe we’re in the 10% net growth rate.

Stephen Scouten: Okay. If I could sneak in one more. Just kind of wondering how you’re thinking about the total payout ratio. Obviously, the last couple of quarters have been extremely aggressive, but I know Will said you might need to hold more capital for growth. So how can we think about what you might be from a total [indiscernible]?

William Matthews: Stephen, really, our guidance of 40% to 60% over the medium to long term still holds. And I think that makes sense. If you think about it at a — call it, a 17% return on tangible common equity, if we’re growing at the 8% to 10% range, then a 46% payout ratio would essentially hold our capital levels pretty constant. We did exceed that not only in the fourth quarter, but also here in the first quarter. I think first quarter is around 93%, but we thought it was an opportune time given where the share price dislocation was in our minds and we’re more active. But we — I’ll also say too, our capital policy and thoughts about capital in addition to the growth, we have, I think, a pretty sophisticated capital stress testing framework, and that informs our capital thoughts as well. So we integrate that, and we like to travel in that 11% to 12% CET1 range.

Operator: We’ll move next to Anthony Elian at JPMorgan.

Anthony Elian: Will, you reiterate the expense outlook from the 4% you gave us last quarter. Just thinking about the cadence of quarterly expenses. Is it pretty consistent with each remaining quarter or anything you’d call out for the pattern of expenses by quarter?

William Matthews: Yes. I’ll call it a couple of things and say, of course, there are things that vary with revenue. You’ve got some revenue-based expenses, but just sort of some general trends we’ve seen over the years, and some of the embedded structural things. So our — generally, most of our staff’s annual — I mean, annual base pay increase typically occurs in July 1. So that gets you — that kicks in the third quarter. That’s 1 thing to keep in mind. Our ownership model incents people both support and in running a business with revenue to think about how they spend money. And sometimes you see more conservatism earlier in the year and sometimes — last year, if you look at our fourth quarter, you saw less conservatism with respect to NIE spend.

So that’s a little bit in there too. First quarter, you’ve got normal things like the higher FICA expense to be a little higher 401(k) match those kind of things. So anyway, but we’re still sticking with our guidance that we gave heading into the year in that roughly 4% range and we’ll continue to address that update as the year goes along. And some of that will, of course, depend on, as John said, the opportunistic nature of our hiring initiatives you can’t necessarily time that exactly when you want it when good people become available.

Anthony Elian: And then, John, you made a comment in your prepared remarks that you may slow the pace of hiring in the next few months given the success you’ve seen. It just seems like you have a lot of room across your footprint to keep making hires. Is the potential for a slowdown of hiring due to keeping a closer eye on what expenses could do over the short term? Or — just walk us through that, please.

John Corbett: Anthony, it’s less about the expense growth. I mean this expense that you have hiring folks is really an investment in the long-term growth of the bank. You look at our core values of our company, it’s all about the long-term horizon, the compounding effects of that. So really, it’s less about that and it’s more just about the assimilation process. We’ve hired 75 or 80 commercial bankers in 6 months. A lot of that occurred in Texas and Colorado. And you just want to make sure folks are assimilating well into the credit culture of the bank there. So I’d probably look to slow a little bit in Texas, Colorado and continue to be opportunistic in the Southeast.

Operator: We’ll go next to Michael Rose at Raymond James.

Michael Rose: Steve, the fees to average assets were a little bit above the target this quarter. I think it was 61 basis points. Obviously, some good momentum there. Any change in thoughts to that? And can we get an update on the correspondent business just given the changing rate curve in your view?

Stephen Young: Sure. Thanks, Michael. Yes, sure. On noninterest income, to your point, I think our guidance for the full year average assets was — noninterest income to average assets was between 55 basis points and 60 basis points. We ended up at 61 basis points. We put a new slide on Page 12 in the deck that you can kind of look at the trend. The good news is if you kind of look at it year-over-year, we’re up from $86 million in the first quarter of 2025 and now we’re at $100 million. So that’s really healthy growth year-over-year. I would say that as you think about the correspondent revenue. You can look at that graph on Page 12. That really has driven almost half of it. We were at $16.7 million a year ago now around $24.4 million.

So I think in our earlier call in January, we mentioned that we probably thought we would average somewhere in the $25 million a quarter on correspondent revenue. Really, there’s no change to that. We were $24.4 million so basically right in line. I don’t think there’s much of a change. There might be 1 quarter is a little better, 1 quarter is a little worse, but I think that’s generally good. And I think our general tone relative to noninterest income to average assets continues to hold kind of in the middle of that range between 55 and 60 basis points. We’re going to be growing the asset base as we’re growing.

Michael Rose: I appreciate it. Maybe just as a follow-up, just as it relates to kind of the commentary, John, around pipelines. I think you said they’re still strong and robust. Can you size that for us? And maybe just given the success that you’ve had hiring kind of in the Texas and Colorado markets, what that could contribute to growth for the franchise over time. I would expect that it would grow at an increasing rate. So the mix would be weighted towards those 2 markets given some of the success and obviously some of the merger disruption?

John Corbett: Yes. Just to kind of frame up the size of the pipeline. A year ago, the pipeline at the beginning of the year was $3.2 billion. Right now, it’s $6.4 billion. So it’s doubled. And 2/3s of that growth has occurred in Florida, Texas and Colorado, those states. There is a little bit of a mix shift change. Last year, we really saw all the growth was in C&I and very, very little in commercial real estate. The commercial real estate portion of the pipeline has picked up from 35% of the pipeline a year ago. Now it’s about 45% of the pipeline. Still C&I is the majority of it.

Operator: We’ll move next to Janet Lee at TD Bank.

Unknown Analyst: This is Noah [indiscernible] on for Janet Lee. First question, with the investment securities portfolio moving a bit higher, can you walk through how you’re thinking about the trade-off between deploying into securities versus loans?

Stephen Young: Sure. I think for us, as we think about balance sheet growth, we’re mainly looking at it relative to loan growth. I think we’re pretty comfortable. I think our securities, the assets is around 13%. I think in this environment, unless we got a few more rate cuts and there was a bit more of a carry trade there. That is probably not something that we’re going to be trying to fund new security purchases. I don’t expect the securities book to really move. I will tell you that we have about $900 million the rest of the year that’s maturing, about $900 million in 2027, and that weighted average rate is around [ 3 60 ]. So we probably get about 100 basis points on just keeping that book reinvested, but I don’t expect us to expand the book significantly.

Unknown Analyst: Got it. That’s helpful. And then a follow-up. I appreciate the AI slide in the deck. I’m wondering from a cost perspective, is there anything quantifiable that you’re seeing in terms of expense saves and then when we would begin to see that flowing through to the bottom line?

John Corbett: Yes. The incremental cost and expense of AI on the margin is not that high. What we’re seeing is that a lot of the major software providers that we currently have in place, they’re embedding these AI tools and software that already exists. And then on the individual user level, the Copilot licenses, it’s an expense, but it’s relatively small. The fun thing about this is learning about individual use cases and the power of this. We were in a meeting this week, and we own a factoring company where it takes an individual about 2.5 minutes to load in an invoice, and there’s always some human error in that. So 2.5 minutes per invoice, we’ve employed an AI tool that can do 1,000 invoices in 2.5 minutes with 100% accuracy. So these are small use cases, but it’s sort of getting everybody excited. But as far as the expense run rate, I don’t see a big build in the expense run rate. A lot of this is embedded in software we currently utilize.

Stephen Young: I think just a follow-up on that. I think the success that we’re thinking long term, and it’s not any time in the next year, but maybe the next 18 to 24 months is one of the things that we are measuring and monitoring is our number of revenue producers versus the number of our support personnel. And so for us, what we should think that should happen out of this AI boom and the efficiency is that as we increase revenue producers, our support personnel should stay relatively flat, and that should open up sort of the margin in that. So that’s kind of how we’re thinking about monitoring it

Operator: Next, we’ll move to Gary Tenner at D.A. Davidson.

Gary Tenner: A couple of questions. First, just a follow-up on the capital commentary and the kind of payout ratio questions from earlier. Any preliminary calculation on the potential impact of new capital rules on your capital levels?

William Matthews: Yes, Gary, we have run some math on that. And it’s roughly 7% reduction in our risk-weighted assets. And that would be roughly an 85 basis point positive impact on our CET1 levels. Now I’ll say that we don’t run the company currently where the regulatory limit is our controlling factor. There are a lot of other factors, including as I said, our capital stress testing as well as ensuring we maintain the confidence of the rating agencies and whatnot. So I don’t know that that necessarily changes our thoughts a whole lot, but certainly something that’s new, and we have to study a lot further.

Gary Tenner: Appreciate that. And then a follow-up on the fee side of things. Just curious about the deposit account fee line. Obviously, you had a really sizable ramp over the course of 2025, and this quarter seemed a little more of a seasonal dip than typical. So I’m just curious kind of how you see that line trend either full year-over-year or just over the course of the year?

Stephen Young: Sure. This is Steve. Yes, typically, in the fourth quarter, that usually hits the highs of the year because of the seasonal debit card and fees that happen towards the Christmas season and so on. I think from our perspective, I would think that the trend year-over-year would be in the — I think in in our modeling, it’s somewhere in the 3%, 4% range year-over-year. So if you kind of look at that and trended it higher, I think that would probably be the way to think about it. But I think all of that is within — as we model it, that’s all within that 55 to 60 basis points guidance.

Operator: We’ll go next to Ben Gerlinger at Citi.

Benjamin Gerlinger: I just wanted to kind of follow up on correspondent banking. I know you guys said 25-ish per quarter, 100 for the year. I know there’s a little bit of kind of sensitivity to rates. So is it just more business activity and then kind of thinking longer term, if we do get a couple of more cuts, could that 25 turn into 30? Or how should we think about just the business operations overall?

Stephen Young: Sure. No, that’s — it’s a good question. Let me just kind of frame it up and one of the things I think there was a bit of confusion last quarter is just this whole gross versus net. So when I speak about correspondent revenue, I’m speaking to the growth. So you have that graph on Page 12. The $24.4 million is the gross revenue. The other — the minus 3 is the variation margin, which is really kind of an interest margin. But really what the fees that were produced were $24.4 million. So that’s kind of how I think about the business and how we communicate. I guess, looking at the ranges of that business. So in our best years, that business did about $110 million of revenue. The worst year did about $70 million.

So we’re kind of towards the higher end of that. But of course, we’re growing the business organically. So I think the upside to it, where there’s some new products that we’re rolling out really won’t have much of an impact in ’26, but probably more ’27, which would be around commodities to support our energy business would be some of our FX. We do FX, but we’re doing a little bit more hedging. That should add a few million dollars. So on the margin, there’s probably some reasonable upside to it. But I would — I wouldn’t — I don’t think $30 million is a good run rate in ’27, for instance. I just — I don’t know that we know that yet. But as we get further into the year and as we roll out these products and see how they go, I think that would give us more confidence maybe in the — by October to be able to give you a better forecast.

But for right now, there’s a lot of volatility, of course, our ARC business is doing really good. Our bond and trading business is really starting to do well as well. So these things are coming together. The question is with all the volatility how that’s going to play out the next quarter or 2. But I would just expect, as we see it and as we forecast, it’s pretty sturdy and steady for a while before we have the next leg up.

Benjamin Gerlinger: Got you. Okay. That’s great color. And then just a follow-up on mortgage. Is there a fair value mark or anything that’s in there. Just it seems large.

William Matthews: Ben, it’s Will. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we had our normal practice reviewing our MSR valuation, and we had a positive impact this quarter of about $4.5 million net on the MSR valuation. Some quarters has moved against this, some quarters moved it to a positive. This quarter was a positive.

Operator: We’ll go next to David Chiaverini at Jefferies.

David Chiaverini: I wanted to drill into the deposit growth outlook. So with your strong loan growth, and following the first quarter on the deposit side was very strong, but what’s your sense of your ability to sustain that level of growth, again, given the strong growth outlook on the loan side?

Stephen Young: David, it’s a good question. I think it’s the part that is the hardest at this point. I think you saw cost in the yield curve move up during the quarter, you saw short-term funding costs move up during the quarter. So it’s obviously, at this point in time, it’s different than it would have been maybe in January. My guess is it will get a little easier as we get some of the volatility out. Like as I mentioned earlier, our customer deposits grew at 7% this quarter. Obviously, we had the seasonal public funds thing that usually runs around a little bit. We are off $400 million there. But our business accounts, our business was up 10% and a lot of that was treasury management. So hard to forecast here because as I mentioned, the rates on our money market new openings moved up during the quarter from 2.40 to close to 3.

So I guess, I think we can obviously generate deposits. The question is at what cost. And if we can have the funding market move down a little bit, that would be helpful. But generally, the business is growing. The question is at what cost.

David Chiaverini: And then shifting over to credit quality. Looking at nonperforming assets, within the 5-quarter trend. So it looks very stable there. But some of your peers in the Southeast and Texas are showing some upticks. Curious about your view if you — if there’s any areas you’re watching more closely?

John Corbett: We went through this period, David, where rates spiked up 5%, and we underwrote a lot of the commercial real estate with a 3% rate shock. So that’s why we saw a lot of reclassing into special mention and classified of the commercial real estate portfolio. And we inserted a new slide on Page 18. I don’t know if you saw it or not, we broke out that investor commercial real estate portfolio. And really, there’s little to no concern about the loss content in that portfolio given the loan to values and the payment performance. We broke it out by every category, and we’re at a weighted average loan-to-value of these problem loans of 56%. The — 98% of them are current. That includes non-accruals. So that’s really not an area of concern.

The areas would be the normal areas that generally in the economy where we’re seeing a weaker consumer on the lower income range of the consumer. And then on some of the small business, particularly SBA loans because a lot of those are floating rates and they had to deal with a 5% rate shock as well. But we’ve got naturally, the government guarantee on 75% of that. So anyway, that’s a rough overview of kind of our view on credit, but it feels pretty stable right now. Special mentions are coming down. Classifieds to tick down a little on a percentage basis, charge-offs continue to remain low.

Operator: And we’ll go next to Dave Bishop at Hovde Group.

David Bishop: Yes, maybe stay on the credit topic. I appreciate [indiscernible] the NDF lending segment. Are you seeing any sort of credit stress within that — those buckets. Any note you’re well below peers, any appetite to even grow some of the exposure to some of those segments.

John Corbett: Yes, we’re not. The credit team, when all this hit the news, I spent a lot of time with Dan Bockhorst and the credit team analyzing and digging deep in this portfolio. And as you pointed out, it’s really an area that we don’t have much exposure to. It’s the third lowest NDFI exposure amongst our peers, 1.7%. And the biggest piece of that is capital call lines, which our advance rate averages like 50%. So the 1 thing if you step back and think about this pressure on that market, there’s been a lot of growth in it over the last few years. So if you think that there’s pressure on it, it’s probably going to enhance the underwriting standards, which may — some of that business may shift back to the banking industry on a high-level viewpoint.

David Bishop: Got it. And one follow-up in terms of the comments regarding the assimilation of some of the New York bankers in the Texas, Colorado markets. Just curious in terms of those hires are those bankers sort of through noncompete and nonsolicit agreements. I’m curious if they’re sort of generating load in the loan pipeline at this point?

John Corbett: Yes. It’s a case-by-case basis. But I want to say that Dan Strodl told me that the loan pipeline was up to $400 million for the new folks he brought on in the last 6 months. So there’s good production early on. A handful of them will have some kind of employment agreement we’ll work through. So he’s off to a great start. To be able to double your production and go through an integration conversion, take it from $500 million to $1.1 billion. That team has done a fantastic job.

Operator: And that concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to John Corbett for closing remarks.

John Corbett: All right. Audra, thank you. And as always, we want to thank all of you all for your interest and support of the company. If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to reach out. We’ll be available today. And I hope you have a great day.

Operator: And this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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