Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the Smart Financial 4th Quarter 2025 Earnings Release and Conference Call. My name is Claire, and I will be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by 2 on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to Nate Strahl, Director of Strategy and Corporate Development of Smart Financial to begin. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us for Smart Financial's fourth quarter, 2025 earnings conference call. During today's call, we will reference the slides and press release that are available in our investor relations section on our website, smartbank.com. Billy Carroll, our president and chief executive officer, will begin our call, followed by Ron Grzynski, our chief financial officer, who will provide some additional commentary. We will be available to answer your questions at the end of the call. Our comments include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and the actual results could vary materially. We list the factors that might cause these results to differ materially in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements because of new information, early developments, or otherwise, except as may be required by law. During the call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures related to the company's performance. You may see the reconciliation of these measures in the appendices of the earnings release and investor presentation filed on January 20th, 2026 with the SEC. And now I'll turn it over to Billy Carroll to open our call. Billy?

Thanks, Nate, and good morning, everyone. Great to be with you, and thank you for joining us today and for your interest in SMBK. I'll open our call today with some commentary, then hand it over to Ron to walk through the numbers in some greater detail. After our prepared comments, we'll open it up with Ron, Nate, Rhett, Miller, and myself available for Q&A. It's been another very busy quarter for us as we continue to execute on our strategy of leveraging the great foundation we built at Spark Financial. Our team's focus on execution has been outstanding as we wrap the best year in our company's The fourth quarter was yet another example of that. So let's jump right in and discuss some of the highlights. First, and in my opinion, one of the most important metrics, we continue to increase the tangible book value of our company, which is now up to $26.85 per share. That's growth of over 13% annualized quarter over quarter and 17% for the year. For the quarter, we posted operating earnings of $13.7 million or 81 cents per diluted share. This is our seventh consecutive quarter of positive operating leverage, and for the year, we had record earnings of over $51 million. We yet had outstanding growth on both sides of the balance sheet, posting 13% annualized growth in loans and 8% annualized growth in deposits. Our history of strong credit continues with only 22 basis points and non-performing assets. You'll see we added a little more in the allowance to cover our strong loan growth and to address a small handful of FAP equipment loans, but I'm pleased to see these non-performing numbers continue at exceptionally low levels. On the revenue side for the quarter, total operating revenue came in at $53.3 million, but I also want to draw your attention to our pre-provision net revenue number. PPNR has grown from $14.5 million in the fourth quarter of 24 to a record $20.9 million in the final quarter of 25. That's a 44% increase year over year, and revenue expansion has been outstanding. And operating non-interest expenses also came in on target and flat to Q3 at $32.5 million, another great example of our expense discipline. Looking at the first few pages in our deck, you'll see our continuation of some very nice trends. We're building our return metrics and most importantly, growing total revenue, EPS, and as I mentioned earlier, tangible book value. All of those charts are great graphics to illustrate our execution, and I'm looking forward to and expecting these trends to continue. Just a couple of additional high-level comments from me on growth. Our balance sheet expansion is a direct result of the focus of our sales teams. Our continued evolution of an outstanding organic growth company is one of the things I've been most proud of over the last several years. As we've hired well, we've also built an outstanding foundational process that includes aggressively going after new client relationships, growing existing ones, along with a diligent prospecting process. I would argue that we are in a small top-of-class group when it comes to pure organic growth. As I stated, we grew our loan book 13% annualized quarter over quarter as sales momentum stayed strong and balanced across all of our regions. Our average portfolio yield, including fees and accretion, held up well at 6.08%, and our new loan production continues to come onto the books accretive to our total portfolio yields. Regarding deposits, again, deposits were up 8% annualized, and that's inclusive of reducing some of our brokered CD positions. It's important to recognize how we're building this bank with core relationships as we have intense focus on both sides of the balance sheet. Looking at the full year for 2025, we grew net loan balances, $457 million or 12% and grew core deposit balances, $626 million or 14% excluding that brokered CD activity. Just a phenomenal year from our sales and support teams. Our pipelines continue to feel very good as we start 2025, and I will discuss this a little bit more in my closing comments, but we also had some very nice highlight bullets that I want to focus on on our earnings release this quarter, all tied to building the foundation of a bank that is on track to becoming one of the Southeast's strongest regional community banks. One key highlight, in addition to the numbers, is their announcement of our planned expansion into the Columbus, Georgia market. Columbus is a natural move for us as we've been doing business in that market over the last few years out of our Auburn office. The timing was excellent to open an office in the second largest city in the state of Georgia, given the opportunity to bring on some outstanding Columbus bankers and the current market disruption. Over the last couple of weeks, we started the process to expand this region of our footprint. Our style of banking is going to play exceptionally well in Columbus, and we look forward to getting ramped up in 2026. So all in all, a very nice fourth quarter and a very nice way to wrap 2025. And I'm going to stop there and hand it over to Ron to dive into some of the details.

Thanks, Billy. Good morning, everyone. I'll start by highlighting some key deposit results. We experienced great momentum this quarter with non-broker deposits growing by $214 million, nearly 18% annualized, from both new deposit production at a cost of 2.60%, which was down 87 basis points from the prior quarter, and from seasonal inflows. Overall, interest-bearing deposit costs declined by 19 basis points to 2.79% and were 2.74% in December. We also experienced an uptick in non-interest-faring deposits due to some temporary balance increases at year-end. Looking ahead, we anticipate the ratio of non-interest-faring deposits to total deposits to stabilize near 19%. Our team's ability to grow and retain core deposits continues to reduce our need for expensive wholesale funding. Accordingly, we paid down $112 million in broker deposits during the quarter with an average rate of 4.27%, and we anticipate paying down an additional $44 million during Q1, with an average rate of 4.05%, leaving a remaining broker deposit balance of only $8 million. Despite these paydowns, we anticipate maintaining a strong liquidity position, as demonstrated by our quarter-end loan deposit ratio of 85%. During the quarter, our net interest margin increased by 13 basis points to 3.38%. This growth was primarily attributable to a 17 basis point reduction in funding costs, which outweighed the three basis point decrease in interest earning asset yields. The decline in funding costs were driven by our deposit portfolio, which is approximately 45% variable, benefiting from the federal rate reductions and slight mix shift changes, the payoff of our previously issued $40 million of sub debt, and the reduction in high cost broker funding. The lower yield and interest earning assets stemmed from a six-basin point decrease in loan yields, partially offset by a full quarter impact of securities repositioning completed at the end of the prior quarter. During the quarter, the weighted average yield on new loan production was 6.58%. Looking ahead, we are projecting our first quarter 2026 margin in the 3.4 to 3.45% range. Our provision expense totaled $4.1 million, which included an unfunded commitments provision of $408,000. Approximately $2.4 million of the provision was allocated to our Fountain Equipment subsidiary, with the remainder of the provision supporting the bank's strong continued growth. Despite the challenges in this small, isolated segment of our overall loan portfolio, our asset quality ratios continue to remain very low, with non-performing assets comprising 0.22% of total assets and 2025 net charge-offs to average loans of only 8 basis points. At the end of the quarter, the allowance for credit losses was 0.94% of total loans. Looking forward to the first quarter, we expect this ratio to increase slightly by a few basis points as we transition to a new allowance model. This updated model will provide expanded capabilities, including loan segment-specific economic of forecasting and more robust qualitative factor adjustments. Implementation is scheduled for the end of the first quarter. Operating non-interest income reached 8.2 million, surpassing our expectations due to elevated mortgage banking revenue and customer swap fees generated by our capital markets group. All other sources of income are in line with or modestly exceeded our expectations. Operating non-interest expenses held steady at 32.5 million. Salary and benefit costs were slightly higher, driven by increased variable compensation due to a stronger-than-forecasted year-end performance. Our fourth quarter operating efficiency ratio improved to 60 percent, down from 64 percent last quarter, primarily as a result of continued margin improvement and a continued company-wide commitment to expense management. For the first quarter, non-interest income is projected to be approximately $7.6 million, and non-interest expense is expected to be in the range of $33.5 to $34 million. Salary and benefit expenses are anticipated to range from $20.5 to $21 million, slightly elevated from the prior quarter due to the seasonality of our associate merit increases, corresponding employee tax resets, and some new hires. Our bank and consolidated capital ratios experience minor quarter-over-quarter fluctuations, primarily due to timing differences between the issuance of new sub-debt during Q3 and the repayment of the existing issuance on October 2nd. Both the bank and company remain well-capitalized, with the company's total consolidated risk-based capital at 12.67% and tangible common equity ratio improving by 15 basis points to 7.9%. Looking ahead, we are confident that our capital levels are appropriately balanced and well-positioned to support continued growth while optimizing returns on equity. With that said, I'll turn it back over to Billy.

Thanks, Ron. As you can tell from Ron's comments, our trends continue to have a nice trajectory. In drawing your attention back to page 8 of our deck, we are successfully executing on the leveraging phase of growth for our company. On our return metrics, we feel very confident in our ability to move through the 1% and 12% ROA and ROE targets we achieved in 2025 as we look into 2026. We're building a great franchise and arguably some of the most attractive markets in the country and have put together a team that is rapidly moving us forward. We continue to be one of the Southeast's brightest stories, outstanding markets, strong experienced bankers coupled with a great operational and support team, plus very nice complimentary business lines. As we put a bow on 25, we did exactly what we said we were going to do, generate more operating leverage and hit some key revenue and return metric targets. As we look into 2026, expect more of the same. Our focus will be doubling down on our current strategy and getting deeper into our markets. As I mentioned, pipelines are good, and I still think we can continue growing at this high single digit plus pace. On talent acquisition, this continues to be a focus. As I mentioned, we recently added a couple of great bankers to lead our Columbus-Georgia expansion and also added some great bankers in a few of our other markets during Q4. We continue to actively recruit and identify revenue producers that fit our culture in all of our regions. I believe we are included in a very small handful of banks that have built a culture where outstanding regional bankers want to work. We will continue to look for these organic growth opportunities and remain very focused on recruiting. So to summarize, as we enter 2026, we are well positioned. We are executing, growing revenue, EPS, and book value, while staying prudent on expense We remain optimistic around our margin as new production stays strong and as we see the tailwind coming from the rate resets in our loan portfolio over the next couple of Credit continues to be very sound, and on goal setting, setting our $50 million revenue new target for the team several quarters ago led to some great success this past year. So we've set a new internal goal challenging our team to take the next step on our financial metrics. We've set a challenge goal to hit a $4 EPS run rate by the end of 26. So basically hitting a dollar in earnings per share by Q4. That's not going to be easy, but I know we're up for the challenge. There's a great energy around our company and we're excited to tackle 2026. I appreciate the work of our Smart Financial Smart Bank team and the efforts of all of our associates. I'm very proud of what we have going on here at SMBK. So I'm going to stop there and Claire will open it up for questions.

To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Russell Gunther from Stevens. Your line is now open, Russell. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. I wanted to start on the morning, on the loan growth side of things, another very strong double-digit organic growth year for you. It would be helpful to get a sense for whether or not you think that type of growth rate is sustainable in 26. And perhaps as a part of that question, maybe just comment on where that recruitment pipeline does stand today outside of Columbus, where else might you look to hire?

Yeah, I'll start, Russell, and then any of the other guys can jump in. As far as thoughts around growth for 26, I think I mentioned, you know, we did, you know, we had a really, really nice year, double digits every quarter. And so for us going into 26, we're not necessarily backing off that, but as the balance sheet gets a little bit bigger, it's tough to keep hitting those outsized percentages. Again, we're targeting, and I said it in my comments, kind of high single digit plus. That means there might be some quarters where we exceed 10%, but I think if we can hang in there to that eight to nine-ish, I think that helps us get where we want to in 26. So we're still going to kind of guide to high singles. And then as far as recruitment pipelines, we've got a really, we're doing a lot of work. We're talking to a lot of different bankers, again, as we've really kind of got this thing up on plane over the last couple of years. We've just, I do, I said it, I think we're creating a culture where a lot of really good bankers are enjoying working. And so for us, we're just going to continue to tell our story. We look for folks that fit our culture first, that align with the vision that we have for our company. But we're doing that, and there's really no market in particular that we're looking at. We're looking to continue to grow as we double down on getting deeper in every one of these markets. We're really looking at all of our key zones to add talent where we can find them. So pretty agnostic to the market, and we're just looking for really good bankers that can help us execute our growth goals.

Okay. Excellent, Billy. And then last one for me would be on the expense side of things. Appreciate the guide for the coming quarter. I think you guys have posted seven consecutive quarters of positive operating leverage. So it would be helpful to just get a sense for how you're thinking about the overall core expense growth rate for the year, as you contemplate things like franchise investment in technology or the hiring plans you just referenced. Thank you.

Ron, you want to dive into that? I think in our comment, Russell, we're going to try to stay pretty prudent, but we want to continue to invest in people and tech where appropriate. But, Ron, you got any thoughts on kind of just overall year guidance?

Yeah. We've been brought to the last couple of earnings calls. We're expecting to stay within the 34.5 to 35 million dollar band so we're probably targeting around five percent overall expense growth year over year great okay thank you Ron uh hey guys that's it for me thank you so much for taking my questions thank you thank you our next question comes from Catherine Mela from KBW Catherine your line is now open please go ahead thanks good morning good morning It was really nice to see the MIM expansion this quarter and then looks like we've got more coming in the first quarter.

Just kind of thinking about it from a full year perspective and maybe how much that plays into hitting that dollar run rate in the fourth quarter of 2016. Do you feel like as long as rates are stable that we can continue to see an expansion in the back half of the year just given, you know, where the back book loan rate pricing is coming from? You have a nice chart in your deck that kind of highlights that. Or are we more just kind of stable after we see this pop in the first quarter?

Yeah, Ron, you want to take that? Yeah, I get it. I'll let Ron kind of dive into the details. But, yeah, I think for us, it's just, I think as long as rates stay relatively stable, I think that's kind of what we're betting on. But, Ron, you want to maybe talk a little bit about kind of where you see NEM over the course of the next little bit?

Yeah, after the first quarter, 340, 345 range, we're probably seeing, you know, some slower incremental growth quarter over quarter. We're now looking probably to stay at 345. I would see it probably getting to the 350 plus or minus range by year-end. Okay, great.

And then on the size of the balance sheet, you had a little bit of securities growth this quarter, more than we've seen for the rest of the year. How are you thinking about the size of the bond book as we move through 26?

At this point, I think, you know, right now we're really targeting, standing around 11%, 12%. We don't see our bond book getting that much greater than that. You know, we still have some liquidity that we can deploy for loan growth. But again, the investments, we should stay around that 12% range of total assets.

And that's of assets, got it. Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Steve Moss from Piper Sandler. Oh, apologies, from Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, Steve.

Hey, guys. How are you doing? Good morning, Steve. Maybe just following up on the margin here, Ron, in terms of just, you know, obviously next expansion this quarter, I was thinking maybe your funding costs would come in a little bit more just given how many Fed costs we've seen in the past three, four months. Just kind of curious, you know, maybe any color around spot funding costs at quarter end or kind of how you think about the liability side of the business?

I think, you know, we intend, you know, for Q1, you know, we've had, we'll obviously get the full hit of the rate cuts done in the fourth quarter. We intend to go down probably around, I'd say, 17, 18 basis points to Q1. You know, again, everything is market dependent on what we do here. We're getting a lot of lift from we did pay down some broker deposits, some callable broker deposits that gave you some lift. But I still think that we will see it slow down as if we don't get any rate cuts or slower as we go through the year.

Got it. Appreciate that. And then in terms of just the hiring in Columbus, Billy, maybe just did a good size up. the team there in terms of you know how big that could get and you know you talked about hiring maybe just kind of curious like where what that could mean for expensive expense growth over the course of 26 yeah yeah I think a lot of it Andrew probably the easiest answer Steve is it depends I think depends on you know continuing to find the right folks that fit us the initial the initial folks that we've come over to help that came over to help start the market, we're really excited about, and we're going to continue

to dive in and recruit. When we typically do an expansion like this, we've done it traditionally, is that we make sure that we kind of balance the expense growth with production. So I don't think you'll see a material impact, and even as we hire, we typically try to blend that in as we continue to grab growth on the balance sheet. And so from that standpoint, I don't think you'll see a material number that would impact the expense run rates going forward. I do think over the course of the next several quarters and maybe the next couple of years that we're going to continue to see some disruption in that market. I think there will be opportunities to continue to add really good team members in that market. and remember, you know, the thing about it, Columbus, even though, you know, it's only 45 minutes from Auburn, we've really been able to build, you know, we've been able to build some really nice relationships in that zone. We bank a lot of folks in Columbus today out of Auburn. And so this is just really, it gives us just a nice spot and it allows us to get deeper in that zone, which really aligns with everything that we've been saying. And so, you know, I think we're going to be able to kind of use this little, that little flag planting in Columbus to just pick up some good talent over the next little bit but I don't think you'll see it have a material impact on the expense line okay appreciate that and maybe just following up Billy I mean obviously been doing a lot of organic growth here and quite successful on that side I'm just curious you know any updated thoughts on on M&A here not really you know we've said it all along and it would it would It really has to be something unique and special to get us to want to pivot. When we're growing, you saw me, we were able to grow a half billion dollars on both sides of the balance sheet last year, that's 10% of our, almost 10% of our footage, if we continue to do that and not have to put any shares out, man, that's a home run and that's something that, you know, as we built this thing to be able to create this engine, and it's great. It's just a testament to the sales teams, the sales leaders that we have in this company that we're really starting to generate that sort of momentum. And again, I touched on it in my comments, but we've really developed, I think, a great process that, you know, quite frankly, I don't think a lot of banks have been able to replicate. There's a handful that we've watched that we've seen that do it really, really well. you know, I think we're kind of getting into that class where we can be a really strong organic grower. So as long as we can continue to execute this way, I think you'll probably just see more and more of this from us.

Billy's convinced me over the last two years, looking at how our metrics have improved over the last two years, we can really grow organically and improve this bank and improve the efficiency and the profitability. And man, it sure is easier on our team to build it organically.

What's risk? We're kind of boring, Steve. We kind of laugh. We laugh around our table. We're kind of a boring story. But we continue to look to improve these EPS numbers and these efficiency numbers and the metrics, and all of that will come. We just continue to execute. You don't have to take the risk of looking to integrate another bank and other culture and some folks like that strategy and we've done it we've been successful to it not saying that we won't ever do it again but man it's just it would it need to be special to have us pivot today well another nice quarter and thank you very much for for the call here guys appreciate it thank you thank you thank you our next question comes from steven scotten from python sandler your line is now rupin please go ahead yeah good morning everyone um so i know you said you're kind of agnostic around, you know, potentially where to hire, do you think about talent?

But are there any other markets that you see similar to Columbus that could be kind of a natural extension to where you guys are doing business today? Whether that's, I don't know if it could be Macon or if it could be anywhere else kind of throughout the footprint that might that might make sense in the future?

Yeah, it is. Yeah, possibly, you know, when you look at, When you look at kind of where we are, I mean, obviously we banked some of North Georgia out of Chattanooga. That would be something that's similar. If you found something that might be in that market, that could help. Macon, again, kind of looking at some of this South Georgia, as we continue to grow, maybe that's not on our plan today, but again, a market that we could grow into. The biggest things, and we really are agnostic to the market, but we've got tons of opportunity, especially in markets like Nashville and in markets like Birmingham. We want to lean into those markets. We added another office, just a loan production office in the Nashville metro area last quarter just to give us a little bit more space as we continue to add some good talent in that And so, you know, I think you'll see us wanting to lean into those markets, get a little bit, get even deeper into the Birminghams and the Nashvilles. But, you know, nothing really that looks like Columbus on our board today. But, you know, we could potentially look at a couple of those Georgia markets down the road.

Got it. And I like that you noted your kind of internal challenge goal here to kind of hit this dollar a quarter, maybe EPS run rate by year end 26. Is there anything, you know, more significant that needs to occur or any, you know, kind of segment of the earnings power of the bank that needs to improve to get you there? Or is it more just continuation of the same things you've been doing, driving operating leverage, organic growth, and the like?

Yeah, just stay on the path. Stay diligent in our process. Keep grinding. It's kind of like we say around here. Just keep grinding. A lot of it is, no, there's really nothing that we need to do. Just continue to execute. Just, you know, a little bit more operating leverage over the course of the next several quarters. Probably a little flatter with the short quarter. Operating leverage will be a little bit flatter probably in Q1 with a shorter quarter. And we think that ramps up as you get into Q2, Q3, Q4, as we get this loan back book repriced, as we get up, get some, you know, get the growth that we think we can get, feel like we can get onto the balance sheet during the course of the year. We can get there. We've got to stay disciplined on expenses. We've been able to do that. I don't think there's anything that's going to cause us to veer off that course. So a lot of it, like I said to Steve's comment earlier, we're kind of boring. We just got to – we're just going to execute. And like I said, I'm really bullish on the team that we've got in place to help us do that. So nothing special. Just go work hard.

Yeah, makes sense. No, boring is never bad in banking.

So congrats on all the continued success. thank you as a reminder to ask a question please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now we will now pause for any questions to be registered we currently have no further questions so I'll hand back to Miller Wellborn for any closing remarks thank you Claire we appreciate everybody being on the call today thank you for your continued support of the bank and for all that each of you do every day look forward to jumping into 26 and thank you

very much have a great day thank you this now concludes today's call thank you all for joining you may now disconnect your lines