Smartfinancial Inc. (SMBK) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Smart Financial Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Release and Conference Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand over to Nate Strahl, Director of Investor Relations, to begin. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Erica. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Smart Financial's third quarter, 2026 earnings webcast and conference call. During today's call, we will reference the slides and earnings release available in the Investor Relations section of our website at smartbank.com. Billy Carroll, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will begin the call, followed by Ron Krasinski, our Chief Financial Officer, will provide additional commentary. We will be available to answer your questions at the conclusion of our call. Our comments today include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are described in our earnings release and SEC filings, which are available on our website. We undertake no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise, except as required by law. During today's call, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures related to the company's performance. Reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendices to the earnings release and investor presentation filed with the SEC on October 19, 2026. And now, I'll turn the call over to Billy Carroll.

Thanks, Nate, and good morning, everyone. Great to be with you, and thank you for joining us today and for your interest in SMBK. As usual, I'll open our call with some commentary and then hand it over to Ron to walk through the numbers in greater detail. After our prepared comments, we'll open it up with Ron, Nate, Rhett, Miller, and myself available for Q&A. The third quarter was another outstanding one for our company. We continued to build strong organic momentum, generated record operating revenue, and expanded their return metrics. The foundation we have built over the past several years is producing the results we expected, and our team remains highly focused on disciplined growth and long-term shareholder value. So let me jump right into some of the highlights. First, and as I always say, one of the most important metrics to me, we continue to increase the tangible book value of our company. Tangible book value per share was up, ending the quarter at $28.50. The tangible book value excluding AOCI increased to $30.03. That represents 15% annualized quarter-over-quarter growth excluding AOCI. For the quarter, we posted operating earnings of $18.6 million, or $1.10, for diluted share, and record operating revenue of $57.5 million. We did have a few moving parts that netted out positive to operating earnings this quarter, including a nice tax credit transaction that Ron will discuss in a moment. We again delivered excellent growth on both sides of the balance sheet with 15% annualized organic loan growth and 12% annualized core deposit growth. Our return metrics, though slightly aided this quarter, continue to strengthen. Operating return on average assets increased to 1.20%, and operating return on average tangible common equity increased to 15.1%. Credit quality remains very sound. Non-performing assets were only 25 basis points of total assets, and annualized net charge-offs were 6 basis points. We did have a slight uptick in delinquencies in our fountain equipment subsidiary as higher diesel prices have strained some transportation business but overall very manageable as that continues to be a relatively small piece of our overall loan book. And we were thrilled to open our full service Columbus Georgia Financial Center during the quarter. This is our first branch in this great state and an important step in building density in that market in supporting the strong start our Columbus team has made. Looking at the first few pages in our deck, you can see the continued progress in revenue, EPS, return metrics, and tangible book value. The consistency of those trends demonstrates the strength of our organic strategy and the operating leverage we are building. A couple of additional high-level comments from me on growth. we added $174 million in loans this quarter, representing 15% annualized. The growth remains broad-based, with strong production across all regions and continued momentum in C&I lending. Our average loan portfolio yield, including fees and accretion, kicked up to 6.08%. Regarding deposits, core deposits increased $163 million, or 12% annualized during the quarter. Our focus on both sides of the balance sheet continues to pay off, and loan-to-deposit ratios maintain very manageable at 87%. Deposit pricing remains competitive, and higher funding caused pressure of the margin modestly, but net interest income still increased nicely to $49.4 million as balance sheet growth more than offset that pressure. On expenses, operating non-interest expense was $36.4 million. The quarter included some slightly higher one-time items, along with continued investment in our people and franchise. Even with that increase, year-over-year operating revenue growth outpaced operating expense growth. We will maintain discipline around expenses, but we'll also continue making investments that support growth, including revenue-producing talent, technology, and strategic facilities. So, all in all, another excellent quarter of continued execution. I'm going to stop there and hand it over to Ron to dive into the details. Thanks, Billy, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with deposits.

During the quarter, our non-broker deposits grew $163 million, driven by continued new account growth and strong relationship expansion. The weighted average cost of new deposit production increased 43 basis points to 3.33% for the quarter and was 3.36% for September. Non-interest-sparing deposits were essentially unchanged at $920 million, representing approximately 70% of total deposits. Interest-bearing deposit costs increased nine basis points to 2.71%, while total deposit costs increased 11 basis points to 2.26%. Loan balances increased $174 million, with growth diversified across all loan categories and geographies. New loan production carried a weighted average yield of 6.37% for the quarter and was 6.78% for September. Our growth on both sides of the balance sheet reflects the consistent execution of our relations-based strategy. Our bank has remained focused on pairing quality loan growth with broader client relationships, operating accounts, and core deposits. Turning to margin, net interest income increased $1.3 million to $49.4 million, and net interest margin was 3.45% in line with our stated guidance. Looking ahead, we expect continued improvement in asset yields to support modest margin expansion over time. However, near-term deposit cost pressure is expected to continue to offset some of that benefit. As such, for the fourth quarter, we currently expect net interest margin to remain around current levels in the 3.45% range. Our provision for credit losses declined to 687 000 from 1.5 million in the prior quarter this included approximately 1.1 million of provision partially offset by a 371 000 release from our unfunded commitments liability the provision also benefited from a 1.7 million net release of a loan specific reserve driven by a loan payoff overall the allowance for credit losses increased slightly to 45.6 million and our allowance to loans ratio declined to 94 basis points we believe the allowance is appropriate for the portfolio and current environment operating non-interest operating non-interest income was 8.1 million up 245 000 from the prior quarter led by service charges and mortgage banking income together with higher net interest income drove operating revenue to 75 $57.5 million, reflecting contingent momentum across the company. Operating non-users expense totaled $36.4 million, up $2.4 million from the prior quarter. Approximately $1 million of this increase was attributable to sale losses and valuation write-downs on repossessed equipment and our equipment finance subsidiary. Salary benefit expenses also increased, primarily due to higher production-related variable compensation. Professional service expense included approximately $300,000 of consulting and placement costs associated with our tax credit purchase. Adjusting for the equipment finance and tax credit expenses, our non-issue expenses were in line with our stated guidance. Our operating efficiency ratio increased to approximately 63% from 60% in the prior quarter. Although the ratio was elevated this quarter due to the aforementioned items, we expect to generate positive operating leverage over time as our recent investments contribute more meaningfully to revenue. We will continue making targeted investments in our expanding markets while maintaining discipline across the broader expense base. For the fourth quarter, we expect operating non-interest income of approximately $7.5 million and operating non-interest expense of $35 to $35.5 million. Salary and benefit expenses are expected to range from $21 to $21.5 million, reflecting production-related incentive compensation and additional hiring. Incentive compensation accruals will vary with performance. Turning to taxes, income tax expense was $1.9 million compared with $4.2 million in the prior quarter. During the quarter, we purchased $36 million of transferable energy tax credits at a discount to face resulting in a 2.6 million dollar income tax benefit looking ahead we may consider similar transactions from time to time as part of our tax planning our effective tax rate going forward will be in the range of 19.5 to 20.5 percent i'll wrap up with capital our tangible common equity ratio was 7.8 compared with eight percent in the second quarter the decline in the tangible common equity ratio was primarily attributable to changes in ALCI as rising interest rates reduced the fair value of our bond portfolio during the quarter. In contrast, our estimated common equity tier one ratio increased to 9.8 percent and our estimated total risk-based capital ratio was 12.6 percent at quarter end.

Our capital position remains solid and provides flexibility to support organic growth maintain balancing strength and continue building long-term shareholder value with that said i'll turn it back over to billy thanks ron as you can tell from ron's comments we continue to execute successfully in the leveraging phase of our company's growth our outlook remains centered on the strategy that has brought us here getting deeper in our markets growing share expanding high value relationships recruiting great bankers and leveraging the infrastructure and capabilities we have built. Our pipelines remain solid, and we continue to see opportunities across our footprint. The higher rate forecast does present some added challenges as we look ahead, but I'm going to continue to stick to our high single digits plus growth guidance, even though we've bettered that in recent quarters. Talent acquisition remains a high priority. Market disruption across the southeast continues to create opportunities for us to add experienced revenue producers who fit our culture. We have added some strong bankers in several markets this year, and our ability to recruit maintains one of our company's key competitive advantages. We had several very nice recruiting wins this quarter and have several other great talent members in the pipeline currently. Again, Columbus, Georgia is a good example of our strategy and action as we opened our full-service financial center during the quarter, right in the heart of Columbus's main business district. We're very bullish about the opportunity to build meaningful relationships and market share. To summarize, we're positioned very well. We are executing, posting record operating revenue this quarter. We are producing, posting double-digit organic growth on both sides of the balance sheet. We're managing risk as credit remains very sound, and we are winning on talent as we continue to to add outstanding new team members. I also want to close with a huge shout out to our associates, as our company was recently named to Great Place to Work's list of top 50 mid-sized companies in the country, and we also rank number 11 nationally in the financial institutions category. This is another great statement on the culture that this team is creating. Our future is bright, and I appreciate the work of our smart financial and smart bank team and the efforts of all of our associates. I'm extremely proud of what we're building here at SMBK. I'll stop there and we'll open it up for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Will Jones with KBW. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hey, great. Good morning, guys. Hey, Will. Hey, another really strong quarter of growth, both sides of the balance sheet, loans, and deposits. I know last quarter we spoke about some deposit seasonality that we would see in the back of the quarter that may be supporting some of the growth we saw. Could you speak to maybe any seasonality in this quarter's results and what you would expect to maybe flow through into the balance of this year?

Ron, you want to jump in on that one?

Yeah, we did get a pickup really for Q3 is throughout the board, not only new relationships, but building of the existing client base. So I think we're still looking for a good growth quarter for fourth, and we're out of our seasonality trend, our historical trending for that.

Yeah, got it. And then I think, Ron, I heard you say the new deposits in the quarter were $3.30. Did I hear that right?

Correct. $3.33 for the quarter, yes.

Okay. And as we just kind of model out and think about deposit betas moving forward, could you just maybe walk us through where you would level set expectations there? You know, and hear you that margin may be more stable over the near term as, you know, some of your repricing on the asset side is offset by deposit costs. Is that how we should, you know, kind of think about, you know, additional incremental hikes from here?

I know the forward curve, you know, would imply maybe a few more hikes coming into 2027. you know is kind of a stable margin where you would uh you know could kind of peg uh margin performance as we think about additional hikes um in the future yeah uh first we're about uh since the new rate since the rates hiked again um we're probably running around 70 beta at this point of time um you know we're we're really so neutral um we're really not going to be affected by rate hikes or or rate decreases at this point um a lot of our expansion that's uh you know our modest expansion throughout 2027 is really due to our repricing book uh we will see a incremental lift

going through 2027 so as far as rate hikes um we should be fairly neutral uh throughout each rate hike which by the way our our guidance does include a rate hike in december yeah okay and then just just fair to say i know we talked about a one dollar eps target by the end of this year uh feels like things are still kind of turning in that direction if we normalize uh some of the expenses from this quarter is that a kind of a fair comment is that is that the way that you guys are kind of uh doing the business yeah well i i think you're spot on yeah you really you shake out kind of the the ebbs and flows this quarter is really a solid quarter and and uh we still feel

very good about our ability to kind of hit that four-by-four challenge that we've stated publicly hitting that dollar run rate. We're still on that trajectory and feel really good about our ability, not just hit that, but our ability to continue to move EPS higher as we look into next year. Again, we've talked about it a lot. I mean, our focus on just continuing to grow EPS and revenue and book value that that's kind of where we're sitting and uh team's done a great job on that so yeah i think we're we're moving in that direction and feel pretty good about the chances of getting that here pretty soon yeah certainly well the momentum is is certainly uh still very much evident so um congrats there guys and then thanks for the questions thanks thanks will the next question comes from the line of russell gunther with stephens your line is open please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. I wanted to start on the loan growth side of things. Morning, Billy. Another enviable organic growth quarter and guide, maybe a more intermediate question on my end. As you guys think about potential Fed rate hikes and the absolute level of interest rates, is there a threshold where you would expect to see some pipeline fallout that would put that kind of high, single, low, double-digit growth profile at risk?

Yes, that's a really good question, Russell. Yeah, obviously, as rates edged up, and quite frankly, we're talking about that a lot with our division and regional leadership. We're talking about, you know, pipelines and thinking about 27 and starting to lay out our forecasts. And, you know, right now, even with kind of the current rate environment, we've not, pipelines still feel pretty good. Now, I do agree. I think if you're going to see another two to three hikes, could that have some impact as we look into 27? Absolutely. I think the macro is the macro. And so we, you know, we've got to, you know, we've got to deal with that just like everybody else. What I will say is that, you know, I call it the hustle factor that our guys and gals have across our board of just getting out and bringing in new relationships. I don't think that will slow down. So it might slow a little bit of just what I call just maybe some of the new projects that are going on that we see. But I still think we have got a great shot at continuing to bring in new relationships, new deposit accounts, and new funded debt as we hopefully move things from other entities.

Very helpful. Thank you, Billy. And then, you know, always have that great slide in the deck that flushes out your back book, Repricing Opportunity. Ron, you mentioned the reinvestment rates on the loan side. Could you just share where you're reinvesting on the investment securities front? And then on the other side, it would be helpful to get a sense for just kind of where spot and the period deposit rates ended the quarter.

Yeah, at this point, we're buying bonds, so for plus 85, so in the five plus range. Again, a lot of our, we're just kind of just keeping our balance of our investments pretty stable over time. And the spot deposit pricing, our CDs were today around 410 for seven-month CDs. Our 13-month CDs are at 415. And our money markets are in the 360 to 370 range at this point. We try to target 95% of Fed funds.

Fantastic. Thank you. And then just last one for me, if you don't mind. I appreciate the near-term expense outlook, but how are you guys thinking about a core expense growth rate on a more intermediate-term basis as you guys balance franchise investment and talent and tech with the goal of delivering positive operating leverage?

Yeah, great question. And again, we're having these exact same conversations, Russell, as we're kind of going through our 27 forecasting, you know, we, you know, again, you use the word, it is balanced, you know, we're continuing to grow, continuing to add team members, you know, when we look at, we kind of look at it almost in a little bit of, I call it same store sales, you know, when you kind of factor out, you know, some of the new ads, I think if you factor out kind of some of that, and you just look at where we are moving forward, I think we can stay pretty reasonable on the expense growth. Now, Ron, I know we're talking about, I don't know if you've got, we're probably not prepared to really lay, I know we're working through forecasts right now, probably not ready to give 27 guidance, but I mean, percentage-wise, you got a range that you could maybe share?

You know, I, you know, for both of these, I think we're going to be in a five to six growth range going off of a fourth quarter's run rate. But again, we, you know, we, we will be providing continuous leverage and sustainability in our, in our, in our workforce, in our franchise. You know, we benefited from keeping our expenses to a tight band, but you know, our franchise is growing. So we will have incremental growth in our non-interest expenses.

Yep. Nope. Understood. I appreciate your thoughts, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

Thank you, Russell.

The next question comes from the line of Stephen Scutin with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Ron, I appreciate the information you gave there on CD and money market costs there.

Can you talk a little bit about maybe what you're seeing all in kind of blended rates come in on the deposit side and kind of how you're seeing spreads overall and any sort of directional trends there, whether you're seen spreads compressed given competition or what have you yeah we've always you know um you know the last couple of quarters we were probably on our side of the house kind of quiet getting the phone calls of price to get the pricing competition is real um you know we're coming in at the 335 range all in um that's kind of what we expect i don't know how much incrementally higher we're to go at this point, but that's to be determined. The market is real and we're getting more calls every day for exception pricing.

So that's Bell's best I could tell you at this point. But I'll add too, Steven, I think the team's also doing a really nice job on the asset side. You know, we're sitting down and really looking at watching that and kind of fighting for every basis point on the asset side. You know, loan grows competitive too, but we've been able to to continue to eke out pretty nice incremental rates on our loan growth as well. So while you have a little more deposit funding than we'd like to see, we're doing a nice job balancing it with the growth that we're getting.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the growth is a huge tailwind there. And I think that the average yield is, what, $6.08 currently? And I'm not sure if you noted this or if it's in the slide deck apologies, because I missed it, but new loan yields are coming on around where, Olin?

Yeah, September was $6.78, so for the quarter it was $6.37. So we are getting some nice lift from the rate increase.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Appreciate that. And I think, you know, Billy, you mentioned the $1 run rate and your progression there. Do you guys have or do you think you'll maybe be putting out some longer-term profitability targets from here? You guys have made just obviously tremendous strides over the last couple years. Just kind of curious where you think you can continue to head from here. What's possible for the franchise?

Yeah, yeah, Stephen, we will. I think, you know, we're spending a lot of time. We've worked through our executive team's planning meetings over the last few weeks and got board strategy coming up here in a couple of weeks. And so we're laying out the forecast. You know, we, as y'all know, we're pretty transparent. We've demonstrated our ability to kind of challenge ourselves internally and execute on that. That's worked pretty well. So we're kind of working through what that next challenge is going to be for our group, but we will. We'll be sharing that at the appropriate time. But, again, I remain so excited about what we're seeing in this company, the energy, the, again, I mentioned recruitment. I mean, we're adding some great bankers to this platform just strategically, just strategically and in some key markets. So I love our ability to continue executing. And so, yeah, we'll be laying out. We've got Nate's kind of our marketing guy when it comes to kind of crafting the mantras for the challenges. So we're trying to figure out exactly what we want to lay out for 27, but stay tuned.

And I do think the whole team's up for the challenge. I mean, they push us. Absolutely. It's a good mix of driving for hire.

It seems like you have a group that likes a challenge. so that's fantastic. I guess last thing for me, and I think I kind of asked you this last quarter as well, but M&A possibilities, I mean, does any of this change? You continue to have a strength from a pricing power perspective. You're now in Columbus. I mean, do you think about, you know, maybe changing direction at all or putting that back on the table in any way, shape, or form, given maybe a desire to get more scale and density in newer markets?

You know, I think, our focus continues to be 1A on what we've done. This organic strategy and just adding great regional bankers is really where we want to focus. We're watching what's going on in the world. There are opportunities out there. Again, I've said it before and I'll reiterate it. I think it would have to be something that was really unique that made us better and not just bigger if we were ever to look at something. Because, again, we've kind of got this thing built to where we can punch up. And, you know, we've got, when you look at our products and our services and our ability to compete against the larger regional banks, we can do that now at six billion. And so I think for us, it would have to be really unique for us to consider it, but we're always keeping our eye open with what's happening, but organic continues to be 1A.

Yeah, I think it's intriguing to look at, obviously always fun to run the numbers, but man, we are pretty darn focused on what we're doing now, and I echo what Billy said. It would have to be super, super attractive for us to deviate from the current strategy. Yep, makes sense.

It continues to be a great answer there. Keep it up, guys. Appreciate the time.

The next question comes from the line of Brett Rabatton with Stone X Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

If I heard the guidance correct, the guidance for 4Q fee income was $7.5 million. One, is that the right number? And then two, it's a little softer than 3Q. If so, any thoughts on the fourth quarter? level of fee income.

Yeah, Brett. Yeah, fourth quarter, we're projecting $7.5 million, and it is softer. It's really the mortgage, our mortgage unit, the seasonality of it. You know, could we do better? Maybe from what's in the pipeline, but right now we're, you know, usually we do start slowing down, and that's been a pretty decent lift for us quarter over quarter.

So that's really the only item that's really causing that okay and and any thoughts on the third quarter strength you know versus what i've seen from some other banks you know when mortgage has been tough given rates was that i'm sorry brett was that quite was that mortgage is that what you were mortgage specific yeah just the mortgage banking line item was was was stronger and you know 3q than and 2Q and 1Q, and, you know, it just seems like others have had some pretty tough comps in 3Q, just given rates. So I was just curious what the strength was related to 3Q.

Yeah, I'll do that, and then Ron or Brett, I mean, chime in. But, yeah, overall, I think a lot of it has just been, you know, our mortgage group has really had just an overall really good year. we've continued to add some really good mortgage bankers over the course, especially early in the year. Those folks have kind of ramped up and have kind of gained momentum, even in an environment. We were actually talking with one of our mortgage team members yesterday about kind of prospects, and Ron said, and you do get a little bit of seasonality. You don't have as many closings usually in Q4, but our pipelines feel pretty good. We're still getting, while some one to four pockets may be a little bit softer in some different spots. We've been able to continue to eke out really good growth and been real pleased with what we've been able to accomplish this year on mortgage. So I think a lot of it is just, number one, team's very focused and sales side's doing a great job there. And then probably number two is just, you know, we've been able to do it with some really good new mortgage banker additions this year. I don't Oh, Rhett, Ron, any additional color on that from you guys?

No, you're spot on. I mean, our volume, you know, we have been putting more originators out on the field. So our volume has increased. So we've just, you know, it's been working for us. Great team, great hustle.

Yeah, the production side has, to your point, Billy, the new hires has been a key driver. And then I think that team's ability to just continue to process activity very efficiently is also, it helps with the new producer. if we're able to get deals turned around quickly and get responses back in business.

Okay. That's super helpful. And then the other question I had was just around slide 14. And if you could just refresh my memory on you've got nearly half a billion of fixed-rate loans yielding slightly under 5% that mature by the end of next year and a little over $100 million of adjustable-rate loans at a similar rate. But to those loans, I mean, I assume those are all kind of work, you know, fixed rate commercial real estate type of properties. Do those loans, do you think, reprice to a higher level? Or do you think that those loans end up repricing someplace else with another institution? Or just any thoughts on that slide 14, those loans that are repricing, you know, over the next year?

Yeah, I'll start. You know, what we have seen for our renewals and repricing, we are getting, you know, one, we're getting about 100, 110 basis points over the original rate. Two, for the renewal side, we are keeping around 80, 85% of those in-house. So, we're very successful in keeping those. Nice retention and a lot better rates than what we've had. So, you know, it's been something we've been working at for a while and quarter over quarter. So, we don't see why that would defer or change going forward either.

Okay. If I could ask one last quick one just around demand. You know, and I've had folks asking about maybe demand being quelled by higher rates. And you guys obviously have an origination rate in September close to 7%. Have you guys seen any of that where higher rates might be starting to slow demand a little bit, or is it just not a factor at this point?

You know, we're watching it. We're watching it, Brett. I know we talk about pipelines a lot, you know, just trying to project growth over the near term is as good as you can project off the pipelines. But we've usually been pretty accurate around that. We're not seeing it slow yet. You know, I think, you know, if you do get a couple of more rate increases in there, could you see some slowdown as we look into 27? You know, absolutely. Again, I'll kind of go back to my comment that I made earlier. You know, it is not slowing our teams calling efforts down and our prospecting efforts. And so even though you might get a little bit of softness maybe in some new projects, I think our ability to move clients over and to move deals over remains pretty good. I don't read anything that you would add to that.

I think that's spot on, Billy. I would say what we're seeing in opportunities I don't think is really slow when you combine our calling efforts and our new team members and additions we've had across the footprint. um we're still seeing a very steady pipeline okay great guys thanks for asking the next question comes from the line of steve moss with raymond james your line is open please go ahead good morning guys you know maybe just start on the uh equipment finance hey billy um on the equipment finance here just with uh uh fountain um i think i heard you billy talk about you know some

challenges within that portfolio regarding higher diesel just kind of curious you know how large is that portfolio um and any call you can give there yeah i'll i'll give it a little just a little high level with the rest maybe you could walk through specifics on portfolio balances um uh yeah overall yeah my comments were you know you saw a little we saw a little bit of delinquency creep in that book a lot of that's just some of these smaller mom-and-pop transports you know just a little bit of strain there uh you know we've been able to kind of uh navigate that pretty well internally so you know with with diesel prices up you know you might fail we might have a little bit more delinquency but overall we think it's continued to be very manageable as it's a small piece of

the book or any any portfolio specifics yeah i'll just say it's about 145 million or so yeah is the Okay.

Great. Appreciate that color there. And then just on, you know, thinking about NII growth here going forward, you know, given the 70% deposit beta, you know, sounds like you'll have another good quarter of loan growth. So, you know, obviously like a mid-teens type year for you guys. You know, for NII in the upcoming quarter, if the margin is holding 345, is that like a 2% type NII number for you guys here?

And we probably had we were probably a little better than that this quarter. I think we're probably had looked at it from a percentage standpoint. We probably calculate pretty quick. But I think it's probably I think we're a little better than that this last quarter. But that's probably right in the right range. Ron, you got a quick math on that?

We're probably looking at the NIA change about pretty closer to 3% for Q4.

Okay. So maybe a little bit – so maybe loan growth is similar to the current quarter for the fourth quarter here?

Yeah. Yeah. A little – maybe a ton higher, but yes. Yes, sir.

Awesome. Thanks, Ron. Okay. And just in terms of – you guys have managed down your securities and liquidity a bit. Kind of seems like we're hitting the floor here. I'm just curious, are you guys willing to run it a bit lower to fund loan growth? or have we hit the floor? Actually, that's what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, I still think we have a little bit. Probably we could probably go $80 million less, but we're getting near our floor at this point. So we've got a little bit more ammo, but we just keep reinvesting in the portfolio.

Well, nice quarter, and that's all my questions. Appreciate all the call here, guys. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Steve.

The next question comes from the line of Christopher Adamo with Breen Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

This is Chris Adamo on for Chris Maranac. I got a quick one for you on the credit front, so I guess what would you guys, could you provide any color, I guess, into the CRA loss rate for the quarter, and also, I guess, how do you kind of see that going forward and impacting future provision and overall reserve levels going forward as well?

I guess just make sure I had to clarify the right question, Chris, was it was you're saying loss levels. Is that what I guess just had to how do we how do we view loss levels going forward? Is that correct?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's correct.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll just yeah. I'll make a high level comment and then let Rhett jump in. And, you know, overall, you know, you still feel really good about, you know, about the credit book. Again, when you look at, you know, what little we had in the way of losses so far this year, most of that has been our equipment finance sub-related, which, you know, is usually typical. We'll have a little bit more than that just because we get the yield for it. But, you know, I don't anticipate anything unusual going forward, Rhett. anything on your side as far as just kind of expected thoughts around credit in the next couple of quarters?

Billy, I would say absolutely for purposes of the outlook. I mean, I think it's clearly to your point. I mean, our strain is in that equipment portfolio and wouldn't anticipate to see any significant changes there as far as larger additional losses. I mean, And we'll work through that book as we go through this cycle in that transportation space. But don't anticipate it having any significant impact. I mean, we feel like our allowance is positioned very well with where we are today.

So, yeah, I think Chris, ain't you, but you're lost, right, stable moving forward.

Lots of laughter, you guys. I appreciate the time.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Miller Welburn, Chairman of the Board, for closing remarks.

We really appreciate y'all joining us today. Thank you for your interest in what we're building here at the bank and for our team. And I hope y'all each have a great day. Talk to you soon.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.