thank you for standing by my name is carly and i will be your conference operator today at this time i would like to welcome everyone to the northwest bank shares fourth quarter 2025 earnings call all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise after the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer session if you would like to ask a question during this time simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Michael Perry, Managing Director, Corporate Development and Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, operator. Welcome to Northwest Bank Shares' fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me today are Lou Tortillo, President and CEO of Northwest Bank Shares, Doug Schosser, our Chief Financial Officer, and P.K. Creole, our Chief Credit Officer. During this call, we will refer to information included in the supplemental fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings presentation, which is available on our investor relations website. If you'd like to read our forward-looking and other related disclosures, you can find them on slide two. Thank you. And now I'll hand it over to Lou.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and 2025 full-year results.

I'll let Doug take you through the specifics of our strong fourth quarter performance.

I would like to take a step back and reflect on a transformational year for Northwest and how our achievements position us for continued growth in 2026. On slide four, you can see some of the financial highlights of 2025. We closed on a significant acquisition, drove record revenue of $655 million for the full year, and continued to expand the firm's net interest margin. Coupled with our demonstrated expense management discipline through the closing and integration of our sizable acquisition, we drove double-digit EPS growth, all while investing in the talent, technology, and new financial centers and products to support our future growth prospects. One of the high points of the year was the acquisition and successful integration of Penns Woods, bringing us into the ranks of the top 100 banks in the U.S. by assets. As well as adding 20 financial centers to our existing Pennsylvania footprint, we welcome new team members and thousands of new customers to Northwest. I'm proud of the team for a successful execution of a seamless integration at scale, while while maintaining our distinct Northwest culture and driving a strong core performance across the bank. We continue to transform our consumer bank, moving from branch consolidation to expansion, opening our first new financial center since 2018 in the Indianapolis, Indiana MSA, featuring our new design focused on customer hospitality. We're building out our presence in our Columbus headquarters market with new financial centers now under development and due to open later this year in key locations across the city. We've already added several new team members with strong local and business community ties to focus on building momentum in advance of opening our doors. We remain focused on excellence as an outstanding full-service neighborhood bank providing a highly personalized service. I'm proud to share that we have just been recognized by Newsweek for the third consecutive year as one of America's best regional banks. We continue to strengthen and diversify our commercial banking business with C&I momentum of 26% year-over-year average loan growth. In 2025, we introduced a new franchise finance vertical, rounding out our nationwide business verticals, each with experienced and well-connected industry leaders, giving us a strong point of distinction in the specialty finance area. We also materially grew our SBA lending activity in 2025, earning a spot among the top 50 originators in the U.S. And at the year end, we closed on a significant funding for a Columbus-based business as we grow our SBA business both locally and nationally.

Our bank has relied on outstanding talent for its success.

Over the past 18 months, we've made significant investments in executive and regional leadership, Hiring accomplished executives across consumer and commercial banking, wealth management, legal, and finance from numerous other respected financial institutions. We have a highly experienced leadership team in place that's equipped to drive ongoing transformation and growth across our business. In 2025, we delivered on our commitment to our shareholders, returning more than half of our profits through a quarterly dividend of 20 cents per share. This is the 125th consecutive quarter in which the company has paid a cash dividend. Looking ahead, I'm confident in our trajectory. For 2026, we were providing full-year guidance for another record year. Doug will provide all the details on our outlook. Finally, as we have previously discussed, we have also significantly reduced our level of classified assets. 2025 was a fast-paced and productive year. We've laid the foundation for a year of organic growth in 2026, as we maintain our focus on optimizing our operations, expanding our financial center network, and delivering growth across our consumer and commercial lines of business. With that, I'll turn it over to Doug to review fourth quarter results and provide more detail on our 2026 outlook.

Thank you, Lou. Good morning, everyone. As Lou indicated, we were pleased with our financial performance. We delivered a strong fourth quarter, and we successfully completed all remaining merger conversion activities on time and on budget. This is the product of all the efforts of our entire team working tirelessly to deliver these results, while also ensuring that our merger and conversion activities went smoothly. I am grateful to the team for their efforts. Now, let's continue on page 5 of the earnings presentation, where I'll walk you through the highlights of Northwest financial results for the fourth quarter. As a reminder, we closed our merger on July 25th. As such, this is our first full quarter of reporting as a combined entity. Given the overall size of this transaction, our fully completed conversion, and opportunities as a combined organization, we don't intend to disaggregate results now or in the future. Our gap EPS for the quarter was $0.31 per share, and on an adjusted basis, our EPS was $0.33 per share, an improvement on the prior quarter of $0.29 per share and $0.04 per share, respectively, driven by record revenue, net interest margin improvement, and expense management discipline. Net interest income grew $6.2 million, or 4.6% quarter over quarter, with net interest margin improving to 3.69%, benefiting from higher average loan yields, increased average earning assets from the acquisition, and purchase accounting accretion. Non-interest income increased by $5.5 million, or 17%, quarter over quarter, driven by an increase in bank-owned life insurance income due to higher debt benefit recorded in the fourth quarter, supporting a total revenue increase of $11.8 million, quarter over quarter, or 7%. We also saw improvement in our pre-tax, pre-provisioned net revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025, which increased to $66.4 million, a 92% increase from the third quarter of 2025 on a gap basis, and with $70.6 million, a 7% improvement from third quarter 2025 on an adjusted basis. And our adjusted efficiency ratio of 59.5% in the fourth quarter improved by 10 basis points quarter over quarter and nine basis points year over year as we continue to exercise tight expense discipline. Journey to page six, I'll spend a moment covering our loan balances. Average loans grew $414 million quarter-over-quarter, benefiting from a full-quarter impact from the acquired balance sheet and organic loan growth. More importantly, end-up period loans grew by $66 million in the fourth quarter, ending the year at $13 billion, laying a strong foundation for 2026 continued growth. Our loan yield increased to 5.65% in the fourth quarter of 2025, growing by two basis points quarter over quarter, and our average commercial loans increased $162 million, or 7.1% quarter over quarter, and $509 million, or 26% year over year. Moving to page seven and our deposit expenses, which continue to be a source of strength and stability, Average total deposits grew by $475 million quarter-over-quarter, benefiting from the acquired balance sheet and organic growth. Our granular, diversified deposit book has an average balance of $19,000, with customer deposits consisting of over 723,000 accounts with an average tenure of 12 years. Customer non-brokered average deposits increased $507 million quarter-over-quarter, while brokered deposits decreased $32 million. quarter-over-quarter. Our cost of deposits decreased two basis points to 1.53%, a product of our proactive management of the overall portfolio and benefit of late-year rate cuts in 2025. 43% of our CD portfolio matures within the first quarter of 2026 at a weighted average rate of 3.60%. With new volumes at anticipated lower rates, this should drive an overall decline in CD costs. Although our overall interest rate sensitivity position remains fairly neutral, our balance sheet has become slightly more asset sensitive with the continued growth in floating rate commercial loans. Turning to net interest margin on page 8, net interest margin increased four basis points to 3.69% in the fourth quarter 2025, with purchase accounting accretions net impact equating to four basis points. Turning to our securities portfolio on page 9, we purchased $363 million of securities during the quarter, consistent with our existing portfolio risk metrics. This did not meaningfully change the portfolio's weighted average life, which remains at 4.9 years. Our new purchases were consistent with the current composition of the portfolio, as we continue to strengthen an already strong source of liquidity. Our portfolio yield continues to increase as new security purchases come on at higher yields in the runoff portfolio, yields increased to 29 basis points to 3.11% in the quarter. 29% of the portfolio is held to maturity to protect tangible common equity. Turning to page 10, our non-interest income increased $5.6 million quarter over quarter, driven by an increase in bank-owned life insurance income due to higher death benefit income in the quarter. Non-interest income decreased $2.3 million year over year, however, the prior year quarter, Included a gain on sale of Visa B shares and a gain on low-income housing tax credit investment that did not recur in 2025. Turning to page 11, the overall expense, excluding merger and restructuring expenses, was higher quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year, as the fourth quarter of 2025 included a full quarter of the acquired Pennswoods operations. Compensation and benefits increase in the fourth quarter 2025 is driven by a full quarter of employees from the Pennswoods acquisition combined with increased performance based incentive compensation based on our strong financial performance in 2025. Additionally, adjusted efficiency ratio was 59.5% in the fourth quarter 2025, continuing the improvement in expense management over the last year on page 12 you'll see overall acl coverage at 1.15 is down from the third quarter 2025 driven by net charge-offs in the current period which on an annualized basis were 40 basis points as was guided and are elevated as a result of one 9.2 million dollar charge-off of a student housing loan this loan was originated more than 10 years ago has been been in work out for several years prior to it being fully resolved this quarter. As a reminder, we have no meaningful concentration in student housing in our portfolio today. Our 2025 net charge-offs of 25 basis points were at the bottom end of a full-year guidance of 25 to 35 basis points. Turning to credit quality on page 13, our credit risk metrics are within internal expectations given the impact of the loans we acquired from the acquisition. Our total delinquency increased from one 0.10% to 1.50% quarter over quarter, primarily as a result of mortgage loans and a 31-day month at quarter end. Our 90-day-plus delinquencies declined from 0.64% to 0.51% quarter over quarter, and NPAs decreased by 21 million quarter over quarter. Taking a deeper dive into the breakdown of our credit quality on page 14, fourth quarter December 2025 continued to see a decline in classified loans as a percentage of total loans and on an absolute basis, which was caused primarily by improvements within the CRE portfolio. As we discussed on earlier calls, we remain focused on reducing our classified loan balances. Turning to page 15, we are providing our full-year outlook for 2026. We expect to see loan growth in 2026 in the low to mid single digits and deposit growth in the low single digits. We expect revenues to be in the range of $710 million to $730 million and net interest margin in the low $370s. We anticipate non-interest income in the range of $125 to $130 million and non-interest expense to be in the $420 to $430 million range. We anticipate net charge-offs of between 20 to 27 basis points and we anticipate the tax rate to remain flat to 2025 rate at approximately 23 percent as we continue to grow in 2026 we will manage the business and drive positive operating average as a reminder we said last quarter we had not fully recognized all of the cost savings from the merger we are on track and expected to achieve 100 of the cost savings in the first quarter of 2026 which is ahead of schedule that is fully reflected in our outlook i will turn the call over to the operator who will open up the lines for a live q a session

at this time i would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question press star then the number one on your telephone keypad we'll pause for just a moment to compile the q a roster your first question comes from Jeff Rulis with DA Davidson.

Good morning. Just to follow on, Doug, I appreciate the commentary on the expenses and the cost saves. I guess looking at the four-year guide, call it the midpoint at 425 for expenses.

I guess it's 106 a quarter, I guess, if you just average but typical seasonality and then if is q1 maybe a little you start off a little heavier on that end if you could just comment on any trend line with the expenses that'd be great thanks yeah happy to Jeff and thanks for the question so a couple things right so yes you're right seasonally you will typically see some increases and expenses in the first quarter for like FICA resets and some other things but I still think our overall guide you're right in the way you think about it right if I've got the low end of the guide at about 105 million a quarter you know we also would see increases typically in the second quarter for merit increases so I think you're right to say that the first quarter might be a little bit elevated but I would expect overall it not to be at the same level as we were at before gotcha and it seemed Like, is some of the performance based in Q4 a little one-time?

I know that you've got the full quarter of Pennswoods, but is there a little bit of non-recurring kind of performance year-end stuff in that figure?

Yep. As you true up all your incentive plans and production plans and other things in the year-end, you've got a little bit of that lift in the fourth quarter as well.

Appreciate it. And one last one just on the margin, similar kind of question. In the low 30, the 370 range, one, does that include accretion, assuming it does, and then two, kind of the rate assumptions underlying that?

Yeah, so it does include sort of normal contractual purchase accounting accretion. So there would be some slight variation to that when you've got early paydowns or payoffs. So it's one thing to note. So the other thing is we do have included in our guidance three rate cuts internally. Now, one of them was in January. We received a rate cut that we weren't expecting in December, so that effectively offsets it. So we would be thinking there's going to be two more rate cuts between here and the end of the year. However, we are pretty neutrally positioned, drifting slightly asset sensitive, as I said in my remarks, but generally neutral. So our NIM guidance really isn't contingent on those two rate cuts. We would stick to that if there were only, you know, one rate cut or no rate cut.

Thanks for the detail.

Appreciate it. Thanks, Jeff, for the question.

Your next question comes from Tim Switzer with KBW.

Hey, good morning, Tim. Thanks for the question. First one, quick follow-up on the NIM and the purchase accounting. Can you clarify the overall net purchase accounting impact to NII this quarter? I think the slide deck referenced four basis points, but also $4 million. And my math on those don't quite add up to that. And then I guess just to clarify, is that also a good run rate going forward?

Yeah, I'm not sure on the math piece. But, yeah, the $4 million and the four basis points was effectively what we were kind of going back and recalculating all of that to. Again, I would say, generally speaking, we had pretty positive movements across the balance sheet, right? We did have a rate cut in there. So you had improvements in loan yields, small, but they were there in the margin. You had lower deposit costs, and you also had improvements on the security portfolio. portfolio, and then you have that four basis points impact on purchase accounting. But again, all of those underlying metrics we're driving up. Income-wise, of course, having a rate reduction in there sort of changes the income dynamic a little bit on the loan portfolio. I get you.

But is four basis points a good run rate for purchase accounting, obviously dependent on prepayments and things like that?

Yeah, probably. I mean, we would have had, as we went through the fourth quarter, of course, we closed our merger in July, right? So by the time we got through the end, the first two quarters are a little bit bumpy because you're still kind of catching up on everything. But the guidance would fully incorporate those contractual purchase accounting. So I think if you kind of go with a low 370s guidance that were provided, that would be inclusive both of normal performance as well as the impact of purchase accounting. Again, it does not assume materially different levels of repayments.

Okay, got it. And then I was looking for an update. You mentioned on the call, but on your SBA business, you mentioned about recently closing the funding. Could you maybe provide a little bit more details there? And then what are your growth expectations for this business going forward? And how much of that volume will you be retaining on the balance sheet versus looking to sell?

Yeah, Lou, will I answer some of that? And I'll give you some of that. First of all, Well, one of the things that we had the opportunity to do was balance sheet a bit more of that because we had some opportunistic fee income as the fully proceeds come through and we had the opportunity to not have to take as many SBA gains. We certainly did that within the quarter because obviously those are very nice yielding loans and we'd like to have them on our balance sheet. And I think as we talked about before, we do do national originations in the SBA business, But for our in-foot print clients, we tend to want to keep them on the balance sheet. And the other thing that we'll tend to do is we'll manage a reasonable amount of growth in fee income from the SBA business, as well as balance sheeting a reasonable portion of that business. I don't think we want to get into the cycle where we're booking all the gains and on that constant treadmill. So as we continue to build out the SBA vertical, we're going to do both. We're going to balance sheet, and we're going to sell for gains as we kind of migrate through the process. And then, again, we are really excited about the build-out of that team and the fact that we've now reached the top 40 in SBA volume, top 40 originators high volume.

Yeah, Tim, this is Lou. Good, Lou. So just a follow-up on Doug's comments and your question, we really like the flexibility that this provides for us for, you know, commercial loan growth, spread income on the balance sheet with the flexibility and the lever to generate fee income. We are just now in the early innings of scaling this business. We've invested a lot in people, a lot in the underwriting and due diligence and portfolio management around this. And our strategy really is to capitalize on quality business nationally, but also, and maybe more importantly, to focus on driving customers and customer retention in the footprint in the four states we operate in. So we're going to layer this product, and we're looking at some other SBA products into our retail franchise, As we noted, we thought it was important to note in the call that the deal we did right here in Columbus. And so, yeah, we're really, really happy with the business. We'll be like we are with all these businesses. We'll scale them prudently. We're not in a hurry to get to the top 10. So yeah, really pleased with this. And most importantly, I think I'd like to drive the message that we've built the infrastructure to do this in a prudent manner.

Yeah, got it. I mean, the strategy makes a lot of sense to me. You touched on it. If I could add one quick follow-up. You know, there's been some disruption in the SBA space with, you know, the rising credit losses over the last few years and then some of the SOP changes over the summer. Where are you finding the talent you're hiring from? And, you know, how are you, you know, going forward making sure that you guys are, as you mentioned, you know, prudently running the business? Yeah.

No, great question because it's very important, right? So as you know, we've kind of remade the executive suite here over the last couple of years. And J.D. Marteau, who we formerly was GE, TD Bank, and Lending Club, when he came to the firm, he had contacts that he was able to bring. So we know the management we're bringing in. We know the performance level, and we understand what their acumen is, and they have a long history of success. You know, I wouldn't certainly want to name firms, but I would tell you, like all businesses, we've gone to the best and the best of the industry and recruited from those franchises. So we're really comfortable and have experience with the team. Yeah, that sounds great.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Daniel Tamayo with Raymond James.

Hi, Daniel. Hey, good morning, guys. This is Tim DeLacian for Danny.

Hope you're doing well.

Oh, hey, Tim. Hey, good morning. Hey, so just wanted to switch over maybe to the balance sheet. As you had mentioned in the release, you know, you had targeted the securities portfolio increase in the quarter. Could you maybe share some details on maybe when the timing of when the securities were purchased during the quarter and then kind of describe maybe your appetite to grow the security book relative to the asset base going forward?

Yeah, so we looked at the opportunity. So, again, I think we were keep growing our securities book a little bit because we were slightly underweighted if you sort of compared us to sort of peer banks and other things. We did take advantage of that a little bit earlier in the quarter, but not all of it. So basically mid to late October, and then there was a bit more done in November, mid to late November. And we'll continue to look at advantages for how do we sort of support that portfolio going forward. It's a very nice store of liquidity for us. And also, you know, as we've got an outlook for declining rates, we'll also do things like try to pre-purchase some of the securities that we see maturing within the quarter, earlier in the quarter versus late to try to pick up a little bit of yield benefit there as well. So really, I would just say it's generally prudently managing the investment portfolio and growing it slightly just to keep it sort of in line with peers. So I think we're targeting around 17% of loans or assets into that bucket.

Okay, great. Thank you for that color, Doug. And then maybe just one follow-up. You know, CRE down this quarter, you guys obviously have the capacity to grow the portfolio going forward here. But, you know, in that low-to-mid single-digit guidance for loan growth in 2026, how should we be thinking about CRE as a contributor to the loan growth this year?

Yeah, so you're right. We do have some opportunities there, given the percentage of capital that we have related to our CRE book. You know, it takes a while to turn that flow around, but we're definitely in the CRE business, and we continue to look for opportunities to sort of support that particular NNR market. So, again, it's not one of the businesses that we're aggressively growing nationally, but in our footprint when there's good developers and operators and we have opportunities to sort of lend to those we would again we also have some non-performing assets that we are some criticizing classified assets that we talked about that are some real estate developers so you're also seeing a little bit of that pressure on that overall line item and again we hope that that continues to abate as we get through next year so again we're looking forward to turning that CRE business around to get it to more flat to slight growth and that's an opportunity that we have coming up in the next year into.

Okay great thank you for the color guys I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Kyle Gehrman with Hovday Group.

Hey good morning I'm on for Dave Bishop.

Yeah so loan growth was strong this quarter was wondering if you could provide some color on what segments and geographic areas are leading the way and how the pipeline is looking headed to the new Yeah, so the pipeline is looking very good, so we've had a nice improvement in the portfolio actually throughout last year, and it continues into the first quarter. And I think I would say it's a broad-based level of growth. So we continue to see kind of growth in our national verticals. Where we're going to focus a little bit more is sort of in our four-state footprint and and in some of our businesses that we think we can continue to attract talent and develop some growth opportunities in market. But again, I would say it's generally broad-based. There are some other things that might translate into some good business opportunities into 26, like some of the tax changes that went through last term including the expensing of equipment is good for our equipment finance business, the full expensing that you get on the tax benefit. So, again, everywhere that there's some opportunities and we like the credit profile and we like the returns that we're getting on those loans, we've got people who are out there and ready to do the business.

Awesome. And maybe a follow-up on that. Can you touch on the payoff and prepayment trends you're seeing in the quarter?

Yeah. I mean, again, we've been focusing on the criticized classified assets and continuing to manage that down. So that was a pretty significant source of our pay downs. And then, again, with interest rates falling, there's going to be other clients that are going to look to refinance existing loans. Obviously, we try to participate in those credits as well, but there's always a bit of a give-and-take in a rate environment that's changing. So I would just say there was nothing in particular that we'd point out on the paydown side, just sort of normal business flows. I will say, I think that coming off of the year that we had, focusing on the merger now we're kind of back to business and running the bank um you know more completely without having that distraction so that'll also be helpful perfect thank you for the color your next question comes from matthew brace with stevens inc uh good morning um morning just a few from me the first thing um quick what was the what was the exact amount of the bully death benefit i was assuming about six and a half million yeah i think that is a pretty a good assumption because it was about $6.5 million. Okay. And then, Doug, you had talked a little bit about CD costs and upcoming maturities. I think you hit the 43% maturing in the first quarter. As you're seeing the CD book kind of reprice, mature, what is the blended all, you know, new cost of CDs, including some of the higher cost promotional stuff?

I'm just trying to get a sense for where CD costs could go near term.

Yeah, I think we're seeing probably about a 10 basis point opportunity. Again, it's all going to be based on competitive pressures at the time, but, you know, you're seeing that kind of an opportunity that evolves. We also got, so we're not, you know, we've got other savings products as well, and we're attracting new money at times when we have some of those promotional rates, all of which is helpful. But I would say if you're kind of thinking about that 10 to 15 basis point opportunity on kind of the reprice with the markets coming down. That's probably fair. Got it. And then the rest of the book, obviously you have a lot of lower cost categories. Just given the environment, we're hearing a lot more about competitive conditions. You know, the core deposit book, how much more room is there to lower costs? Yeah, I mean, again, you're right. I think we're seeing that as well, and we're very focused on sort of managing kind of both the overall size of the deposit book to support growth as well as the overall cost of the book. And, you know, obviously no one knows kind of where the rate counts, rate hikes and cycles are going to go. But I would tell you that I think what we're seeing is you're just seeing a little bit of a longer period of time between a change in rates at the Fed and then sort of the reaction sort of of the banks in general. So I think we're kind of following that trend. So, I'm not concerned that there's not an opportunity there, but that opportunity might just lag rate reductions by a little bit longer than it had in the past. So, call it 30, 45 days before you're going to see sort of those rate reductions.

Got it. Okay.

And then this last one is on M&A, you know, following the last deal. Curious your appetite to participate in Whole Bank M&A and whether or not there's active or ongoing or an increase in conversations. Thank you.

Yeah, this is Lou. I'll take that. You know, I think we signaled in the past and it remains true that we stay focused now on the successful accretion and driving organic growth in 26 as a result of our acquisition. Certainly, you know, we're open to conversations, nothing imminent for us. We're really focused on making sure we execute the 26 plan and that we get the results that are correlated with the acquisition. We think it's going to be very additive. We like our jump-off point, and we want to string together several quarters of strong results before we would entertain anything like that. Again, notwithstanding, given the regulatory environment and maybe some opportunistic deals as we get further along in this year and look into 27, you know, we'll keep our options open. However, you know, our goal is to find something that fits culturally, that drives earnings and value for our shareholders, and that fits into our geographic footprint. So we're not interested really in going out of market at this point. Great. I appreciate all my questions.

Thank you.

Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Manuel Navas with Piper Sandler.

Morning, Manuel.

Hey, internet. Good morning. Can we swing back to the NIM for a moment? Could we just talk about the guide is pretty strong and just wondering what are the drivers and progression of the NIM across the year? I hear you on the CD book repricing being a little bit more neutral. Mercurial yields are benefiting and loan yields are benefiting. Just kind of where does that kind of step the path across the year?

Yeah, I mean, we're not giving into kind of all that guide. But, you know, I think it's safe to assume that we would have a slightly improving margin as you get some of the benefit of those rate cuts, which I think most people are projecting those to be later in the year, right? So that 370 mid or low 370s is pretty consistent with where we were at 369 for the quarter. And I think we're, you know, working to hold on to that. The tradeoff, obviously, is we also want to have, you know, asset growth. So to the extent that there's competition out there, we're not going to price ourselves out of that competition, but we're not anticipating a significant downward pressure either. So I think we're going to work to maintain that low 370s margin. And again, to the extent that it's going to have any sort of slope to it, it's going to be a little bit later in the year because you would expect to have some slightly lower funding costs that would benefit us.

I appreciate that. Another progression question. The net charge-off range is pretty solid. kind of what are some assumptions on that progression or can you not get into that a bit?

I mean yeah I think that we have so obviously in the fourth quarter and we talked about the guide last quarter right that 13 million dollars that was largely focused on we had one significant credit that we knew we were working out and we thought that there was going to be some lost content there so now I think we're back into a much more normalized flow so again there may be a small peak or valley in one quarter given you know a credit or two that happens and we're a relatively overall low level so you can get little spikes but we're not you know we're not anticipating it to be anything you know super material so hopefully we'll have that be a pretty steady charge off rate throughout the year and again that guide is a guides for this year also harken

back we've kind of set our long-term guides always that 25 to 35 so we're still anticipating being at the lower end of that kind of overall guide that's great commentary um switching back to loan growth for a moment can you talk about the mix you spoke a little bit to CRE having some headwinds but some building potential there but can you just talk about the different segments and where you see the most growth I'm guessing C&I has the biggest drivers but just kind of speak across the loan book for this year with that low single digit to the single digit guide yeah you'll probably get a little bit of feedback both from Lou and I on this topic right I think we we see some

opportunities kind of across the book so whether it be an indirect or even you know to the extent that we can start to think about the mortgage portfolio how we slow some of that runoff when we look at certainly what's going on in CRE and then when we see our national vertical so you know we like the way we're position to do business across all of them. And we'll be looking to kind of just support that overall asset growth that we're targeting, that low to mid single digit level. So again, I don't know that we would say it's going to continue to be solely focused just on commercial, but certainly we continue to have opportunity to grow commercial. And again, we've kind of talked about our overall mix. We're not targeting any specific thing. I think we're about 45% commercial 55 consumer we like that we like it anywhere kind of in that 50 percent five percent plus or minus on either side so i think we like the we like the shape of we like the way things are shaping up and having an inverted yield curve also is nice so we have the opportunity to kind of blend out a little bit on the longer end of that curve and pick up some yield that way as well but Luke. Yeah, good morning, Manuel.

How are you? I would concur with Doug, right? So we're getting to the point of equilibrium where we're getting a lot of balance in the book. If you remember a couple of years ago, we were heavy consumer with a large focus in mortgage and long on the curve. As we continue to work that down, remix the sheet, you know, we're nearing a 50-50, and we kind of like that both from an interest rate risk and a credit risk standpoint. We are very diversified for a firm our size in that I think that helps with the risk profile. We're not particularly overweighted in any one business. We have a lot of different levers. We think that this year, consumer, both mortgage, home equity, our indirect, will be strong. And so, you know, driving, I think we're driving growth in our budget across all those sectors. We really like the position we're in. We like the flexibility that we have. And, you know, I think it's, we're unique in that we do have these commercial national verticals. As Doug pointed out, we have a renewed emphasis on in-market, business banking, lower middle market. We have what's recognized in the four states as a very, very strong consumer franchise. So we like the diversification, and we like the ability to be able to pivot, and we are focused on growth in 26 organically on the heels of a pretty significant acquisition that would also drive top-line revenue.

Thank you for that.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call back over to Lou Torcio, President and Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

On behalf of the entire leadership team and the Board of Directors, thank you for joining our call this morning. I'm excited at our prospects in 2026 as we build out our consumer franchise in Columbus, Ohio, deepen relationships in our existing core markets, and continue to build market share in our commercial lines of business. I look forward to speaking to you on our first quarter call in the spring.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.