Earnings Call Transcript - MYFW Q4 FY2025

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first Western Financial Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is pre-recorded. All right, to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Tony Rossi, please go ahead.

Tony Rossi, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Marvin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for First Western Financial's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining us from First Western's management team are Scott Wiley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Julie Korkamp, Chief Operating Officer, and David Weber, Chief Financial Officer. We will use a slide presentation as part of our discussion this morning. If you have not done so already, please visit the events and presentations page of First Western's Investor Relations website to download a copy of the presentation. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements with respect to the future performance and financial condition of First Western Financial that involve risks and uncertainties. Various factors could cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors are discussed in the company's SEC filings, which are available on the company's website. I would also direct you to read the disclaimers in our earnings release and investor presentation. The company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call. Additionally, management may refer to non-GAAP measures, which are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The press release available on the website contains the financial and other quantitative information we discussed today, as well as the reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Scott. Scott?

Scott Wylie, CEO

okay thanks Tony and good morning everybody we executed well in the fourth quarter and saw positive trends in many areas including low growth and interest margin expansion well-managed operating expenses in generally stable asset quality this resulted in an increase in our level profitability the market remains very competitive in terms of pricing on loans and deposits but we continue to successfully generate new loans and deposits by offering by offering a sphere level service expertise and responsiveness rather winning business by offering the lowest rates highest rates on deposits the lowest rates on loans as other banks are doing we continue to maintain a conservative approach to new loan production with our disciplined underwriting and pricing criteria as a result of the additions we've made to our banking team over the past few years as well as generally healthy economic conditions in our market we've had a solid level loan production which was diversified across our markets, industries, and loan types. As a result of our financial performance and the balance sheet management strategies, we had a further increase in both book value and tangible book value per share. Moving to slide four, we generated net income of 3.3 million or 34 cents per diluted share in the fourth quarter which is higher than the prior quarter. We had to write down a value of an Oreo property that reduced our earnings per share by 10 cents after tax in the fourth quarter. Prudent balance sheet management, our tangible book value per share increased 1.6% this quarter. I'll turn the call over to Julie for some additional

Julie Courkamp, COO

discussion of our balance sheet and our treasury. Thanks, Scott. Turning to slide five, we'll look at the trends in our loan portfolio. Our loan helper investment increased $59 million from the end of the prior quarter. We continue to be conservative and highly selective in our new loan production, but with the higher level of productivity we are seeing from the additions to our banking team that we made over the last several quarters, we are seeing a solid level of new loan production, while we are also seeing an increase in our CRE loan demand that meets underwriting, relationship, and pricing criteria. We also saw some construction loans that moved into our CRE portfolio after completion of their projects. New loan production was $146 million in the fourth quarter. The new loan production was diversified with the largest increases coming in our commercial real estate portfolios, and we are also getting deposit relationships with most of these new clients. We continue to be disciplined, and we are maintaining our pricing criteria. This resulted in the average rate on new production being 6.36% in the quarter. Moving to slide 6, we'll take a closer look at deposit trends. Our total deposits increased $102 million from the end of the prior quarter. While we continued to successfully add new deposit relationships, this was partially offset by seasonal outflows we saw largely related to title company operating accounts who typically see declines in their deposit balances during the fourth quarter due to lower home purchase activity. In addition, we were able to run off high cost deposits as a result of the strong core deposit production in the third quarter. Average deposits increased 10% in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. Turning to trust and investment management on slide 7, we had $155 million decrease in our assets under management in the fourth quarter, primarily attributed to net withdrawals on low fee and fixed fee product categories, which was partially offset by improved market conditions on investment agency accounts that carry a higher variable fee, which increased $15 million, or approximately 1%, during the quarter. Now, I'll turn the call over to David for further discussion of our financial results. David?

David Weber, CFO

Thanks, Julie. Turning to slide 8, we'll look at our gross revenue, 1.5% from the prior quarter, primarily due to an increase in net interest income. revenue increased we'll look at the trends in net interest income our net interest income increased five points of 2024 due to an increase in our net interest margin 17 basis points from the prior quarter to 2.71 this was due to a reduction early due to lower rates on money market depositing rate decreases turning to slide 10 decreased by approximately 800 000 early due to a decrease in gain on sale which typically sees seasonal declines in the fourth quarter and a decrease in risk management successfully transition to pre-investment management and insurance that are expected to produce improved 0.2 million from the impacted in the fourth quarter by one time once decreased. We continue to tightly also making investments in the business that we believe will positive. During the slide 12, we'll look at our asset quality. As indicated earlier, we saw generally stable with decreases in non-accrual loans and MPAs and we had a minimal level of net charge-offs in the piece of Oreo and is expected to close remained unchanged at 81 basis points of total loans as the decrease in non accrual loans and MPAs resulted in a more normal level of

Scott Wylie, CEO

provision. Turning slide 13 I'll wrap up with some comments about our outlook. Overall we continue to see relatively healthy economic conditions in our markets. We're seeing good opportunities to have both new clients and talent due due to the ongoing disruption from M&A activity in the Colorado banking market. Recently had a new market present for Arizona where we're seeing good opportunities for growth. Our loan deposit pipelines remain strong and should continue to result in solid balance sheet growth in 2026, with loan and deposit growth at similar levels to what we had in 2025. In addition to the balance sheet growth, we also expect to see positive trends in our net interest margin, our fee income, more operating leverage resulting from our disciplined expense. We had net interest margin of 26 basis points in 2025, and while we expect further expansion in 2026, it may not be at the same level as we saw last year. And while we remain disciplined in our expense control, we believe that investing in the business will drive future shareholder value. The ongoing disruption from the M&A activity in our markets creates opportunities for us to add banking talent, and we will continue to take advantage of these opportunities if and when they materialize, as well as opportunities to add new clients. Based on trends we're seeing in the portfolio and the feedback we're getting from our clients, we're not seeing anything to indicate that we'll experience any meaningful deterioration in asset quality. The positive trends we're seeing in a number of key areas are expected to continue, which we believe will result in a steady improvement in our financial performance and further value being created for our shareholders in 2026. With that, we're happy to take your questions. Marvin, please open up the call. Thank you.

Operator

At this time, we'll conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder to ask a question, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To reach out your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question because our line of Brett Rabberton of HubD. Your line is now open.

Brett D. Rabatin, Analyst — D.A. Davidson

Hey, good afternoon, or good morning, everybody.

Scott Wylie, CEO

Good morning, Brett.

Brett D. Rabatin, Analyst — D.A. Davidson

Wanted to start off on the margin and just the outlook in terms of magnitude of margin expansion opportunities you see in the next few quarters. And then if you add it, the amount of loans that are repricing this year at lower rates from fixed rates.

David Weber, CFO

You know, we had NIM per four pretty pleased with the expansion that occurred there, you know, that was primarily driven by our ability to reduce our deposit costs. Expansion to continue may not be at the same level that we saw through 2025. If you look at Q424 to Q425, you know, it may not be at that same level, but we do expect to continue on the loan for $50 million in funds maturing over the next year. average yield on those, that does give us an opportunity, obviously, to continue to reprice our loan book and other trends on the yield on it. The only thing I would add to that is we have

Scott Wylie, CEO

shifted our balance sheet interest rate risk to be closer to neutral, and we feel continued improvement in NIM is not dependent on continued rate cuts. If we do see rate cuts, that will be beneficial to us expecting debate that one all day but but you know the feeling is that we should have the balance sheet or neutral and that's okay that's

Brett D. Rabatin, Analyst — D.A. Davidson

helpful and then on the asset management wealth management business and the mortgage banking operation you know you've obviously made some changes I was hoping for maybe some clarity on the AUM levels in the fourth quarter relative to 3Q, you know, if you had clients that were just taking money out to do things, or what was the driver behind the trends in that business in the fourth quarter? And then just thinking about 26, you know, given the changes, what you think those businesses might do? You know, obviously rates will impact mortgage, but just any thoughts on those businesses and

Scott Wylie, CEO

the growth of the income yes so maybe I'll start out on that one Julie you want to pick it up so with respect to the wealth management fees the AUM we obviously that deep dive on that because we were a little surprised to see the decline happening in the quarter and what we have seen is a lot of the lower yielding categories and the fixed rate categories have had reductions where actually in the in the higher yielding categories for us on the AUM side that we're seeing improvements so I think you know the trend there is positive it looks negative on the surface you know those are those are actually things that we're trying to prove the trend on PTIM over time we've made a pretty major shift there over the last year, which we've talked about a little bit before, from being so investment management focused and led in the P-TIM world over the last 20 years to being more fiduciary and trust and especially planning driven. Now we've talked about the change in leadership there and a number of very positive changes that have been underway over the last six months. You know, we've seen a lot of progress here in the last few months, and that's going to show up in the numbers in 2026. You know, the other thing that I think you asked about in there was the risk and insurance revenues. And those are typically quite strong in the fourth quarter, and they were not in this quarter. And, you know, we've also made a pretty big restructuring of that group. and there were two very high-cost leaders for that group that were comfortable operating as a loss leader. You know, we're not a big believer in loss leaders here and so we have made some changes there and brought that into the wealth planning team more directly and you don't see the expense save that went with that and you do see the cost reduction. So I think that those were actually very positive developments that we wanted to see.

Julie Courkamp, COO

Maybe something on mortgage. I think that was part of your question as well. But Q4 mortgage production, Q1 mortgage production for us is typically lower, just given the seasonality. But we continue to remain very focused. That's a strategic part of our business. We've added, I think, eight MLOs in the year of 2025. And as you know, it's hard to move MLOs whenever times are strong. So we feel like continuing to make that effort, even though overall the production isn't at the level we want it to be, we're profitable in that area. We're still adding and contributing net positive clients into the bank and the portfolio of the bank. And I would expect that, you know, second and third quarters of the coming year, 2026, are going to be, you know, seasonally stronger than the first and fourth, so I think we have good outlook there. I think we're doing the right things, and then to add on to the well-planning conversation, we have a lot of really strong momentum in that business line and feel really good about what we're doing there. We've also added a B2B offering that's really just now getting going, and we're seeing some early green shoots on that. So I think the outlet for us is strong, but the last, you know, year's production really hasn't shown that yet, so we're

Scott Wylie, CEO

looking to that growth into 2026. Good points there, Julie, and just to give some context to the eight people, that's a 45% increase from where we were a year ago on MLOs at no direct expense. It's a variable cost that's commissioned. Okay. That's really helpful. And then if I could

Brett D. Rabatin, Analyst — D.A. Davidson

ask one last one, you're almost a double-digit grower in 25 on loans and deposits. Does the outlook for you guys as you see it in your economies and markets, does that suggest another similar performance in 26 or any thoughts on how you see the pipelines playing out for the year?

Scott Wylie, CEO

we we are expecting uh growth in 2026 in line with what we saw in 2025 you know we continue as you know brett to have really small market share in all of our markets we're in strong economies i mean i think the big change that we've really seen in the past few months is this market disruption and you know it continues and in fact is accelerating it's creating all this opportunity for talent and for new clients you know we set up this disruption task force when Julie was that in the third quarter yeah late summer and and you know we're working through that group on a series of very specific recruiting and sales and marketing initiatives and we just had our big annual manager summit the last two days, and the success stories coming out of that were remarkable. I mean, there's just a lot of momentum in the field, prospects that don't want to be with these new organizations, and they want a stable, local expert team, And I think that's especially true in our niche with, you know, the private bank and trust focus. And, you know, with strong and healthy and diverse economies, I think all that's going to continue on into 26 and give us good opportunity for balance sheet growth.

Brett D. Rabatin, Analyst — D.A. Davidson

Okay, great. Appreciate all the color.

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Woody Lay of KBW. Your line is not open.

Woody Lay, Analyst — KBW

Hey, thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start on the expense outlook. If I adjust for that Oreo adjustment, it was good to see sort of the core run rate flat. You talk about, you know, continuing to want to invest in the business, especially given the M&A disruption. So how should we think about the expense growth rate in 2026?

Scott Wylie, CEO

You know, the way we've talked about it internally is, you know, we wanted to keep our expense below $20 million a quarter, and I think we've done that. Did you go back and look, David? I've been saying it's something like 12 quarters in a row. I don't know exactly, but certainly over the last eight quarters that's been true. And so I think that's kind of our base case is, you know, how do we drive more efficiency and more effective teamwork here without driving up expenses? But having said that, and this was very much in your question, Woody, you know, if we see opportunities, you know, we have an internal business case process. And we've told our people, you know, if you can bring in some good people that are going to have a strong short-term and long-term impact, we want to hear about it. We want to look at it and support you with that. So I think we're doing the best of both worlds here where we can, you know, manage expenses, grow revenues, get that operating leverage. And if we see opportunities for more revenue growth, go ahead and invest in that. That's, you know, the outlook we're taking for 2020.

Woody Lay, Analyst — KBW

Got it. So, if I pair that with the commentary of growth remaining strong, you know, the NIMH should continually grind higher.

David Weber, CFO

How should we think about the profitability improvement potential in 2026?

Woody Lay, Analyst — KBW

Is there kind of an ROA range that you're hoping to be at by year end?

Scott Wylie, CEO

Yeah, there is, but I'm sworn to secrecy. I'll get my answer and let Julie and David do their rebuttal if they want. You know, if you look at our operating run rate in the third quarter and, again, in the fourth quarter, you know, we're doing something like 50 cents a quarter if you take out things like that boreal write-down, which, again, you know, that was a decision we made. We had this last property up in Basalt, actually near Aspen, and there was some unpermitted construction done by the former owner that we foreclosed on, and the city has just really taken it out on us and made it very difficult for us to sell that thing, given the strong attributes but the unpermitted construction that was done on it. And so we went back and forth and back and forth with them. We had a buyer that was really interested, and she worked with the city, and she couldn't get him anywhere, and now we have a buyer now that put it under contract and is taking it kind of as is, and he was supposed to close in December, and he hasn't finished his diligence yet, so we gave him a 60-day extension, and his request was supposed to close in February, and the update from this week is he's on track. So I think that's going to get sold. a million four right down from the discounted value that we had already put on it. Frankly, we're looking forward to having that off our books, not having Oreo. So that is a one-time thing. We don't have other Oreo. We had that marked below our appraised value. We worked hard to realize that value. At some point, that's not really our highest and best use of our executive's time and effort. So hopefully that'll get sold here in Q1. So if you take that out and you look at kind of the typical monthly expenses, and we always have puts and takes, and I'm not adjusting for that. I'm saying, you know, if you take out the big things, and you kind of run through the net interest income, you look through the fee income, you look through the operating expenses, you know, we're doing kind of a $2 run rate. And it improved actually a little bit from Q3 to Q4. So that's my starting point going forward is under a normal world, we ought to be starting the year at a 2% operating run rate, $2, that was wishful thinking, a 2% thing, $2 share operating run rate. And then I do think we can grow from there. We have said our near-term objective here is to get to a 1% ROA, which would be $3.50. We've got people focused on that. Can we get there on a run rate basis this year I think that's pretty stretchy but but you know I think we will get there and I think we can get beyond that but we have to get there first with the improvements in them and the operating growth and the impact of all these initiatives we've been talking about we seem well on the way there is anything David or Julie you want to add and well

Woody Lay, Analyst — KBW

that's that's really helpful color and and I guess just last for me you know With a strong loan pipeline, how do you think about matching that with core deposits? The growth has been a little lumpy as you've optimized the balance sheet, but just curious on your thoughts on maybe the deposit competition in the next year.

Scott Wylie, CEO

Yeah, you know, the team's really focused on that, and one of the questions we asked folks while they were here for the summit was, you know, how do you feel about the loan pipeline and the deposit pipeline? And, you know, the feedback is that both are strong. I think the focus that we put on the deposit side seems to be paying dividends in terms of that new business. You know, historically, if you look back at the 22-year whatever history of First Western, you know we have found that at the margin when we need deposits to fund the loan opportunities that we want to do we can bring those in and there was a period there actually after our last call it was interesting one of our bigger holders texted or emailed Julie and me and said hey you know great quarter good good report on the third quarter must feel good to get out of the slog of the last couple years and for me that just really resonated that though you You know, it was kind of a difficult period there with, you know, the bank failures and the darling of the private banking industry going out of business and all that. So I think, you know, getting out of that slot, getting back on a growth track, getting off of defense, which I feel like we played well, to get back on offense. And those are all things that I think are panning out in our deposit growth story, which your use of the term lumpy was kind. I mean, that was obviously not what we would choose to see all that great growth in Q3, but it did let us run off some of the high cost deposits in Q4 and in some way kind of proved what we've seen over the years, which is when we want deposits, we can bring them in, and when we don't need them, we can pay them off, and those things help NIM. And, you know, I like the NIM slide this quarter. I'm not sure which page that's on, but if you look at, you know, kind of the full-year trend for the last five quarters, it shows a nice upward trend that gets us – is that page nine, Julie? You know, it gets us on this trajectory back to 310, 315 that I've talked about before that historically we've seen in our banks.

Woody Lay, Analyst — KBW

I appreciate all the insight. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator

Thank you. We'll move in for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Matthew Clark of Piper Stanley. Your line is not open.

Matthew Clark, Analyst — Piper Sandler

Hey, good morning, everyone. Just the first question on the deposit beta, 54% this quarter from an interest-sparing perspective. Do you feel like you can hold that kind of mid-50s beta this year, or do you feel like that might come down a little bit?

David Weber, CFO

No, I think we can hold that.

Scott Wylie, CEO

Okay.

Matthew Clark, Analyst — Piper Sandler

And then do you have the spot rate?

Scott Wylie, CEO

An unhedged response. I like it. I mean, we have seen it come down, you know, Matt. And we do think that, well, David said it.

Matthew Clark, Analyst — Piper Sandler

Yep, okay. And then do you have the spot rate on deposits at the end of the year?

David Weber, CFO

Yeah, it was 286.

Matthew Clark, Analyst — Piper Sandler

Okay. Got it. And then assuming that's the case and just thinking about the near-term margin, kind of implies your beta steps up here, actually, in the first quarter. You know, with the non-interest bearing deposits down at the end of the year, assuming they'll come back to some degree, but borrowings are up a little bit. You'll likely see some asset yield pressure from the December rate cut on the floating rate portfolio, which I think is 25% of the book. It appears like your NIM might come down a little bit here in the first quarter, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and tell me why I'm wrong.

David Weber, CFO

Our NIM in the month of December was 272.

Matthew Clark, Analyst — Piper Sandler

Okay, but in terms of the end of period balance sheet, you don't think there's some incremental pressure there?

David Weber, CFO

No.

Matthew Clark, Analyst — Piper Sandler

I don't. All right. Fair enough. And then the other one I had, actually, I think it was already asked and answered on expenses. That's it for me. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you, Matthew. Thanks, Bob. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Desilum of Titan Capital Management. Your line

Bill Dezellem, Analyst — Tieton Capital Management

now open. Thank you. Two questions from the balance sheet. The first one is mortgage loans for sale jumped in the fourth quarter from, I think, $22 million or so in Q3 up to $40 million in Q4. Would you discuss the dynamics behind that, please? That's right. Yeah. There are timing

David Weber, CFO

dynamics there um timing of when the sales occur explain what those are which are which are loans

Scott Wylie, CEO

that were originating and selling a secondary market that are on the balance in the intro yeah

David Weber, CFO

yeah those those loans are originated for the purpose um from the beginning of you know application and lock and everything those are originated for the purpose you know the balance Typically, we'll kind of trend up, and then we'll package those, and we'll do a sale and move those off the balance sheet. So it does get impacted simply just by the timing of when those say, you know, at the end of the period.

Scott Wylie, CEO

Your question's a good one, though, Bill, because generally when volumes are higher, that balance goes up, but then it's also offset by this timing thing that David wants.

Bill Dezellem, Analyst — Tieton Capital Management

And part of the, I guess, backdrop of the spirit of the question was wondering if there was some dynamic that you saw in the market, whether it was sale premiums or something else that led you to conclude you wanted to hold those a little bit longer, or if it truly was simply timing and getting proper volume set up for your sale.

Scott Wylie, CEO

We don't play that game.

Bill Dezellem, Analyst — Tieton Capital Management

So it's truly just a timing phenomenon. Okay, thank you. And then the other question was relative to your construction and development loans. You had a pretty significant reduction in the amount of those loans. And the question is whether that was an intentional risk mitigation strategy or whether it was all part of the normal ebb and flow of bringing on new loans and loans paying off and moving out of that C&D category.

Scott Wylie, CEO

I would say much more the former than the latter. We had a review of that portfolio 18 months ago, something like that. and felt like that was as high as we wanted it to get and we wanted to work it down. And so if you look on page five, you can see that's gone, you know, 315, 230, 189. And actually a lot of the increase that we've seen in non-owner-occupied CRE is that those construction prices getting finished and then moving on to our investor real estate. I don't think that those generally sit there very long because they get refinanced into permanent financing that I think we'll continue to see

Operator

the areas in that. Great. Thank you. Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Brett Revitin of DE Alliance now open.

Brett D. Rabatin, Analyst — D.A. Davidson

Hey, just one follow-up around the tax rate. It's been jumping around a lot the last few quarters. Any, you know, any thoughts on the tax rate from here and then just any strategies that you guys are implementing on the on the tax side whether it be miss pulls or other other

David Weber, CFO

things thanks yeah good question Brett has been a bit lumpy over the test to do with the k-1 losses that flow through and what the timing of when we actually receive that information of the actual losses versus the projected losses that we're kind of using to to work that through the year for the effective tax rate as well as you know the compensation and the differences had an impact in the fourth quarter so that's that that was one of the main drivers of why we saw the fluctuation and the effective test you know going forward now I think we're more in that 23 to 24 percent range from an effective effective

Scott Wylie, CEO

We have added some tax exempt income sources, I think, over the past 12 months, and we're working on another one now, we're looking at it. So I mean, it's something that we do pay attention to, Brett, but I think for, you know, planning purposes and forecasting purposes.

Brett D. Rabatin, Analyst — D.A. Davidson

Okay, great. That's helpful.

Operator

Thanks. Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from line of Ross Heberman of RLH Investments. Your line is now open.

Ross Heberman, Analyst — Investments

Good morning, Scott. Scott, I got on a bit late. Could you just tell me, did you touch upon your opinion of the mortgage market and what your expectations are for 26? Let's say, I don't know, rates stay about the same or maybe come down a little bit. What's your expectation on your mortgage operation?

Scott Wylie, CEO

Well, thanks for the question, Ross. You know, we have been trying to build our production capability there, even though the market's slower. And Julie did talk on the call a little bit about, you know, our experience has been that when the market's really strong and you want to add more mortgage loan officers, which are commission-based, the producers, they won't move because they have a big pipeline wherever they are. So building that team when time's slow is pretty much how we've experienced that you have to do it if you want to get good ones. And so, as we talked about on the call, we've increased. That has been a focus for us, and we've deliberately gone out and increased our MLO team by eight producers in 2025, which is a 45% increase year over year. So that's somewhere we're investing. We do think, well, investing, they're commission-based, so it's not a cost, but we're investing effort for sure and building that team for future productivity. We do think that there just has to be a lot of pent-up demand out there for people that want to move. We know people aren't going to leave their 2% or 3% mortgages behind, but at some point, you know, if you've got another kid or you're moving and relocating, you know, you need to do that. And we've seen prices, I think, at least in the Denver market, moderate. And so at some point that's going to create some mortgage opportunities for us, I think. And, you know, obviously the decline we saw this year and this quarter, it's not us, it's the industry. And so I think that we are doing a good job of being, you know, playing the hand that we're dealt. I think we're well positioned that when that comes back, we should take advantage of it. Are you seeing any pickup in that division,

Ross Heberman, Analyst — Investments

either in Phoenix or Wyoming, or I think you opened up, was it a lending office in Bozeman, was it? Are you seeing, are those, would those, would you see a pickup there first, or maybe the Denver area, if you saw any sort of pickup, it would show up there first?

Julie Courkamp, COO

We have actually brought in a few MLOs in Arizona, so we've seen some nice production out of that region. And then we've also brought in a few from the Wyoming region, which has really helped us there, too. And these are really high-quality producers that have really our type of client. So some of that you'll see adding to the portfolio. Montana is a little bit trickier. We haven't been successful finding a pure-play MLO there, but we have a great lending team, and they're capable of doing all of the lending needs. So definitely a focus of ours is to make sure that all of the markets are seeing the growth that we want. And we've been seeing production in all of the markets.

Scott Wylie, CEO

And to be clear, Boseman is a full-service First Western Profit Center that is actually contribution positive. They've made really nice progress.

Ross Heberman, Analyst — Investments

And just one other question. And have you been looking around for other operations to buy, either money management or branches or other little banks? Are you actively looking in either in any of those other three markets or any other now that you have a little bit of a currency this year than you had in the year or two past? Is that on your radar screen or that's a backseat and you would rather, if you found some great relationship bankers, you would rather hire one or two and or a lift out rather than a whole bank?

Scott Wylie, CEO

respect. Yeah, so as you know, we have a long history of acquisitions, and our currency really has not been in a place where that has made sense here for the last couple years. Our focus is on organic growth. We talked on the call a little bit about all this market disruption, and the beauty of hiring the people you want is you get the business that you want. You don't have to take the stuff you don't want. And so definitely there's a strong focus here with this disruption task force and with our internal focus on, you know, how do we take advantage in an organic way? And that's front rates, that's resort markets, that's Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, all of them. So we do think there's a lot of opportunity right now for us to just, you know, do our jobs and get after this organic growth. Thanks a lot. The best of luck. Thank you.

Operator

Yep. Thanks, Ross. Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'll now turn it back to Scott Wiley for

Scott Wylie, CEO

closing remarks. Great. Thank you. So, you know, we said for several quarters that we had success playing defense through that slog of 22 and 23, and now we're shifting back onto offense. You know, the headwinds out in the market have changed to tailwinds for 2026 and that's both in financial and economic and competitive terms you know we feel like our 2025 shift to offense really worked and we've leveraged our investments that we've been making in these five key areas I talked about last time which is you know our tech infrastructure our product teams our local pc teams profit center teams processes for more efficiency and more value add. And we've also now strengthened our credit and risk support and marketing teams to support the First Western of the future. So with the positive trends that we saw from Q3 to Q4, where an interest income was up 22% quarter over quarter annualized, or it was also up year over year nicely. Our NEM was up 17 basis points quarter over quarter, 26 basis points year-over-year on a continued path back to where that should be. If you adjust for the operating the Oreo right down, our pre-provisioned net revenues were up another 39% quarter-over-quarter annualized or double from a year ago. Our efficiency ratio when adjusted for that Oreo continues to trend down nicely in our operating run rate in the last quarter was, as I said, you know, 50 cents if you take out, if you normalize it, and over $2 annualized. So looking at our 2026 business plan, assuming a stable environment, we expect these positive trends to continue as we've talked about. You know, market disruption continues and increases. The opportunity for town and clients I don't think has ever been better. Our disruption task forces were focused on recruiting and sales marketing initiatives. Our prospects are telling us they want a stable local team of experts and a stable local institution. Small market share that we have in each of our markets provides lots of upside in our strong and healthy and diverse economies that we are operating in. Our PTM restructuring is working. We'll see some results of that this year, both with the re-emphasis on planning and our B2B initiative that we've launched. Our MLOs, and that's taking advantage of the slow market for building for the future. And our NIM, I think, is going to continue to trend up towards the 315 number we've talked about as the economy and our financial markets normalize. So those NIM gains and some modest balance sheet growth, they will generate some nice debt interest income gains and they'll generate some nice earnings gains. So our attempts to get back to being a financial high performer, we see a clear path to 1% ROA and plenty of room beyond that. So thanks everybody for your support. We really appreciate your dialing in today and we'll look forward to connecting the future. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This has concluded the program. You may not disconnect.