Business First Bancshares, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Krista and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Business First Bank Share's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference 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. And if you'd like to withdraw that question, again, press star one. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Seeley, Senior Vice President, Director of Corporate Strategy and FP&A. Matt, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning and thank you all for joining.

Earlier today, we issued our fourth quarter 2024 earnings press release, a copy of which is available on our website, along with the slide presentation that we will reference during today's call. Please refer to slide three of our presentation, which includes our safe harbor statements regarding forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. For those of you joining by phone, please note the slide presentation is available on our website at www.v1bank.com. Please also note our safe harbor statements are available on page 7 of our earnings press release that was filed with the SEC today. All comments made during today's call are subject to the safe harbor statements in our slide presentation and earnings release. I'm joined this afternoon by Business First Bank Shares CEO and President Jude Melvin, Chief Financial Officer Greg Robertson, Chief Banking Officer Phillip Durden, and President of B1 Bank, Jerry Vaskekew.

After the presentation, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have. With that, I'll turn the call over to you, Jude.

Thanks, Matt. Good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to begin by saying thank you to everyone listening in today or reading the transcripts at some future date. We know you have choices to make when it comes to allocating your attention, and we appreciate your prioritizing our company. 2024 was a significant year for us, one in which we not only made but numerically demonstrated material progress towards goals that we've articulated in this forum over past quarters. And the fourth quarter was a particularly nice capstone to our efforts over the course of the year. Over 2024, we grew our client base while exercising disciplined loan and deposit pricing, generating another quarter of double-digit basis point expansion of our net interest margin, which topped off a nearly 30 basis point expansion since our trough in the first quarter, helping us to achieve a sustainable over 3.5% core NEM sooner than expected. We continued our focus on expense management, leading to greater structural profitability, even while continuing to invest in key technology platforms and adding seasoned employees as we prepare internally for a responsible approach towards $10 billion in assets over the next few years. We funded our portfolio of increasingly diversified loans with even stronger core deposit growth, improving the mix of both sides of the balance sheet, reducing CRE and C&D concentrations markedly, while also maintaining strong asset quality, increasing our loan loss reserve to 0.98%, not including our remaining loan discount from previous acquisitions. Even while we diversify by type of credit asset, we also continue to diversify geographically, with over 40% of our exposure now in the Dallas and Houston markets. We demonstrated traction in our various non-interest income revenue sources, including building out the infrastructure of our correspondent banking function, serving over 100 bank clients. growing income from SBA, and interest rate swap provisioning. In addition to normal organic operations, over the course of the year, we successfully took advantage of opportunities to complete two mergers, one whole bank acquisition of Oakwood Bank in Dallas, and one non-bank transaction, an SBA loan service provider out of Houston. In both cases, we're either on track or ahead of forecasts on earnings impact, employee and client retention, earn-back periods, and minimization of tangible book value dilutions. We accomplished both these acquisitions without the need of additional capital and finished the year with a higher TCE ratio, higher TBV per share, higher Tier 1 leverage ratio, and a stable total risk-based capital ratio. It was a solid constructive quarter and a solid constructive year, and I congratulate our team for all the work they went into it. What I'd like to emphasize in closing is that while this was a solid year, it was not a unique year in terms of our priorities. which will continue to be our points of emphasis into 2025 and beyond. Healthy diversified growth within our capacity for capital generation, a focus on liquidity and capital accretion, continued focus on developing a growing set of robustly served clients, and preparation through investments, prioritization of regulatory relationships, reputation, and balance sheet structuring so that we may continue seizing opportunities as they present themselves, as we're confident they will. With that, I'll turn it back over to you, Matt.

Great. I'll give you the floor, yield the floor to you to kind of go over finances in more detail.

Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Jude. And good afternoon, everyone. As Jude mentioned in his remarks, the fourth quarter marked a strong end to a productive year. I'll spend a few minutes reviewing our results, and we'll discuss our updated outlook before we open up for Q&A. Fourth quarter GAAP net income and EPS available to common shareholders was $15.1 million and 51 cents and included $1.8 million one-time CECL provision related to the Q4 closing in Oakwood, $168,000 merger-related expense, $463,000 core conversion-related expense, and a $21,000 gain on sale of securities. Excluding these non-core items, non-GAAP core net income and EPS available to common holders was $19.5 million and 66 cents. From our perspective, fourth quarter results were highlighted by solid core margin expansion, disciplined expense management, continued execution on non-interest revenue business segments, and disciplined balance sheet growth. Total loans held for investment increased $761.3 million or 58% annualized during the fourth quarter, excluding acquired Oakwood loans during the quarter, organic growth was $62.8 million or 4.8% annualized. Loan growth from the link quarter was largely attributable to net growth in the CNI portfolio of $54.3 million and $20.8 million in the residential one-to-four family portfolio, while construction loans declined by $31.9 million link quarter. Organic production was led by our southwest Louisiana and greater New Orleans region, which accounted for all of the net loan growth to the link quarter. Based on unpaid principal balances, Texas-based loans represent approximately 41% of the overall loan portfolio as of December 31, 2024. Total deposits increased $870.4 million, or 61.4% annualized quarter over quarter. Excluding acquired deposits from Oakwood, organic deposit growth for the quarter was $156.8 million, or 11.1% annualized. Organic deposit growth for the quarter was highlighted by increases in money market deposits of $51.8 million and $33.3 million net growth in non-interest-bearing deposits, with the remainder of the growth being attributed to the bank's seasonal inflow of municipality deposits. Fourth quarter funding costs benefited from a full quarter impact of the Federal Reserve September rate cut and partial quarter impact of the November and December rate cuts. We are pleased with our ability to manage down our deposit rates while still generating positive deposit growth and lowering our loan-to-deposit ratio. Total interest-bearing deposit costs declined by 29 basis points from the linked quarter, highlighted by a 44 basis point quarter-over-quarter reduction in overall cost of now accounts and a 41 basis point reduction in the overall cost of money market accounts. Notably, the weighted average total cost of deposits for the fourth quarter was 2.81%, down 13 basis points from the length quarter, while the December weighted average cost of total deposits was 2.68%. We are encouraged this trajectory will bode well for us as we enter the new year. Total non-interest bearing deposits represent 20.8% of total deposits as of December 31st, 2024, slightly down from 21.1% in the linked quarter, but remain in line with our expectations to end 2024 in the low 20% range. We think the composition of non-interest-bearing deposits should hold relatively constant in the low 20% range for the foreseeable future. Our GAAP reported fourth quarter net interest margin expanded 10 basis points linked quarter from 351 to 361, while the non-GAAP core net interest margin excluding purchase accounting Decretion also increased 10 basis points during the quarter from 3.46 to 3.56%. Fourth quarter net interest income and net interest margin reflect the first full quarter impact of both balance sheets. Both gap and core margin for the quarter expanded more than we expected due to the improved funding costs previously mentioned and disciplined pricing on new loan production. I think it's worth noting that our overall deposit data for the fourth quarter reflecting just the September rate cut was 51%. Considering full quarter impact of the late Q4 rate cuts, we would expect deposit costs to continue to decline in the near term, but will be affected by our ability to retain and attract lower costs in deposits and non-interest-bearing deposits. I would like to make a note of a few takeaways to slide 21 in our investor presentation, including Oakwood. We continue to see 45% to 55% overall deposit betas as achievable. I would also like to point out overall core CD balance retention rates increased from 90% to 90% during December, up from 83% in September. This impressive statistic reflects our team's continued focus on maintaining and retaining core deposit relationships. As you also see on slide 22, we have approximately $2.5 billion floating rate loans at approximately 7.75% weighted average rate, but also have approximately $600 million in fixed rate loans maturing over the next 12 months at a weighted average rate of 6.43%, which we would expect to reprice in the mid-7% range. Last thing I would add in our expectations for loan discount accretions to average approximately $700,000 to $800,000 per quarter moving forward. Moving on to the income statement, GAAP non-interest expense was $49.6 million and included $168,000 of acquisition-related expense and $463,000 conversion-related expense. Core non-interest expense for the fourth quarter of $48.9 million increased to approximately $7.3 million linked quarter due to the full impact of Oakwood's expense base and some seasonality around year-end. We would expect continued increase in our core expenses in the first quarter due to further seasonality around year-end. We also think that the current consensus outlook for core expenses in the low $50 million per quarter range is reasonable. I would, however, like to remind folks that given the late 2025 conversion of our Oakwood franchise, we do not expect material cost savings during the year. Fourth quarter gap in core non-interest income was $11.9 million and $11.8 million respectively. GAAP results did include $21,000 gain on sale of securities. Non-interest income results for the third quarter did come in slightly better than we had expected and was driven by a contribution from our newly formed customer swap business line, which generated approximately $1.3 million in revenue during the quarter. The fourth quarter did benefit from a one-off Foley death benefit of $300,000 as well. We do view Q3 core non-interest income as a good run rate going forward, as well as Q4. Expect our non-interest income to continue to trend with an upward trajectory that will be bumpy, as we've mentioned before. That concludes my prepared remarks, and I'll hand it back over to Jude.

We're prepared to take questions now. It's been a good, solid year that we're proud of, and We're as excited about 2025 as we've ever been.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. And if you would like to withdraw that question, again, press star 1. Your first question comes from the line of Matt Olney with Stevens. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good afternoon, guys. I'll start on the margin. Really good momentum on that core margin in the fourth quarter results, both on reported and core. Based on that commentary that Greg provided around deposit costs, competition, and loan yield, it feels like this momentum can continue at least the first few quarters of 2025. We'd love to hear any additional thoughts you have around the margin next few quarters?

Yeah, Matt, thanks for the question. I think you're right. I think our plan is to continue to grind out low to mid single-digit margin expansion throughout the year, maybe a little more in the beginning of the year because we probably hadn't, as I mentioned, gotten the full impacts of the last rate cut. But that's the plan. The key, obviously, is to continue to attract and grow deposits organically. If we can do that like we've been and loan rates steady, we should see some continued expansion.

Okay. And then I guess also looking for any kind of commentary you have around loan yields, loan pricing, just the competition out there. I would think at some point this year, we'll see some other banks get more aggressive on some of their loan pricing. Is that something you're seeing yet in any signs of that thus far?

I'll talk about kind of what we've seen so far, and maybe I'll let Phillip or Jerry make a comment about what they're seeing with the pipeline. You know, our weighted average for production new and renewed for the fourth quarter was about 758. So still holding in line nicely where we think we should be. I would expect you're right. The challenge will be the competition. Some of our competition may decide to get more aggressive, and we'll have to deal with that on a one-off basis. I don't think that changes our focus on growing relationships and making sure the whole relationship is priced the right way. But I'll let Jerry fill it. Yeah, I would say, Matt, obviously it's always a very competitive environment, and now it's no different. But I do think that we have been pretty consistent over the year. We have some new software as far as our pricing capabilities where we're able to, as Greg said, take into consideration the entire relationship. So those with significant deposit relationships, et cetera, we're able to be very competitive and retain those relationships.

So our bankers do a good job of pulling the line. I would just add, you know, I think this year was a good illustration of our willingness to exercise discipline when it comes to tradeoffs between growth and margin. And we certainly will continue growing and plan to continue growing and want to grow. But we also recognize that over the long term we'll create more value by maintaining pricing discipline even while we grow, even if it's at a more moderate pace. So you know, it's not just what will the market give us, it's also how are we willing to allocate our capital, and I think we are more prepared than ever, both in terms of our mindset and in terms of our data availability, given the technological advancements that we've made, to be able to think through those choices, and so we certainly will continue to grow and plan on being a large organization in the future, but we want to do it the right way, and I think This year has been a good transition for us mindset-wise, and we'll look to continue to think through those trade-offs. Yeah.

Okay. And then just lastly for me, I guess, on the fee income side, we just saw some really strong growth throughout the year from several different sources. I think you mentioned this past quarter it was the customer swap group that contributed nicely. I guess I just kind of want to look forward to 2025. And, Greg, in your commentary, I think you said that the third quarter run rate is the best quarter to kind of consider for our forecast. Did I hear that right? And then any general commentary about what drivers you expect, what different groups and teams you expect to drive that fee income growth in 2025?

Matt, I think what we could expect is that – I may have said Q3, but I think it's Q3 and the bill, the Q4. The $11.8 million in Q4 is what we produced, and I think that's a good run rate to think about how we're going to go forward. I think somewhere you're going to see from $40 to $50 million per year end to $25. As we mentioned, it might be bumpy getting there because there's going to be different contributors along the way as those businesses kind of build out and continue to round out. But I think ending the year between 40 and 50, maybe closer to 50, is probably what the non-interest income target would be.

Yeah, and you know, the important thing for us here is what we're trying to do is build an infrastructure that provides multiple opportunities for that growth so that no one product set or no one function has to consistently outperform, but we can we can kind of work together on how we get to where we want to go. And I think the SBA platform and the swaps are a good example of maybe even different reactions to interest rate movements. You know, as rates come down a little more and they're more stable, maybe the SBA has more of an opportunity to pick up, whereas in a higher rate environment, that begins to limit some of your SBA opportunities. But perhaps the swaps opportunities aren't as great in a more comfortable interest rate environment for everybody. So hopefully we're adding enough different components to our non-interest income that in any given quarter we'll see continued increase. But as Greg said, it's harder to predict than interest rate margins. And so I might see a little volatility, but we feel really bullish on our opportunity when it comes to non-interest income over the course of 2025.

Yeah, I would add one thing. I think our markets and our bankers out there really gathered a really good command of the shifting rate environment. And a little more, you know, normalized yield curve creates new and different opportunities.

So I think it's nice to have the tools we've got via SBA swaps, you know, kind of, you driving some opportunities for clients.

So it's been nice to watch the strategy kind of take hold as we prepare for a normalized rate environment.

And, you know, in a similar vein, with thinking about our bankers that are out there, I think this was a good year in terms of confidence building in the product set. So these are new tools, and they're not too new to the industry, but but a focus on them is new to us, and that's really been a six, eight-quarter journey. And so I think by the end of 2024, we begin to see bankers think about it more often and begin to recognize that there are incentive opportunities and there are ways that we can serve clients more robustly than they might have thought two or three years ago. So partly it's the yield curve does make a difference, as Jerry pointed out, but I think also our our institutional knowledge and our institutional competence will lead to more business in 2025 regardless.

Yeah. Okay, guys. I appreciate the commentary and congrats on the year. I'll step back. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Matt.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Rose with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to get a little more color on this quarter's CNI growth. It was really strong on an organic basis. Just trying to understand if, you know, that was more kind of line-driven or, you know, just customer growth. And then if you can kind of, you know, shape up the pipelines for us and maybe, Jude, if you can just discuss the kind of competition within the different regions and you know, if there's any hiring plans as we kind of contemplate a 2025 loan growth outlook.

Thanks. Yeah, I would say Greg mentioned that we had some success in our Southwest and New Orleans markets.

And actually, volume was a little low. If I heard your first part of your question correctly, I would say that it was a little bit of both. We had some deepening of some existing relationships on CNI, but picked up some new customers. But definitely a focus on that as we transition down, shifted more on the C&I. But some really good wins in the 44th.

I would just say that I don't know that our C&I has increased as much as it appears so on a relative basis. So what we talked about let's say six quarters ago was downshifting growth a little bit, but we felt like most of the downshifting would come through less of a focus on construction and CRE. And we felt like the CNI core business that we have would continue to perform, and that's really kind of what we've seen is that that's been the case. So not necessarily an outlier quarter. I think the whole year has been pretty representative of the fact that CNI has has been relatively stable in terms of its production, but because of the shift in focus, it's taken all up. Really, the pole position that we've always wanted it to, when you think about being a business bank, I think it's important that you have a robust set of offerings and not just do the real estate, although we, of course, feel very comfortable doing the real estate as well. I'm so excited about that and see that as a continued opportunity for us You know, always we have tried to focus on CNI so that we could get the benefits of a more robust deposit relationship. And so part of our success in the deposit generation this year, in particular in the fourth quarter, has been focused on CNI relationships, not for the types of loans, but for the holistic banking relationship. And we still see, we think we are a little bit differentiated from other community banks in our ability to conduct that type of business, and not just to do it, but to do it right. We have internal auditing capabilities that we've invested in over the years, and we recognize that it has a different risk profile and just want to be sure that we're not doing it just for the sake of doing it, but doing it because we're good at it. I think that's a little bit of a moat again because most community banks aren't making those same investments. I can remember it seems like every three or four years we all talk about doing C&I lending, but it doesn't really change in general. But we have chosen to make some investments that some banks haven't made, and I think that's paying off.

Michael, I will say that one other detail that kind of highlights your question is at the end of Q1 of 23, we were about 120% concentrated in C&D as a percentage of capital. And in real time, we finished the fourth quarter at about 78%. So that decline in the C&D book and the total CRE number from 275 to 254 over that same timeframe actually kind of highlights what you were saying, is that I don't know that our focus is any different It's just when you're unwinding the C&D book specifically, as we noted in the quarter as well, that this is not the first quarter that that's happened.

And that's my design as well. I would say also, Michael, the second part of your question about hiring, we don't have ambitious hiring goals this year. We feel like we have capacity internally. We'll continue to add capacity. when we think they're a good cultural fit, and we'll continue to have those conversations. But we believe that our growth opportunities exist within our current set of bankers with some incremental additions over the course of the year. But there was a point maybe three years ago where we were growing 25, 30 bankers a year, and we feel like we've achieved a certain level of platform from which we're able to to grow more by adding support staff and making sure that our processes and procedures are adapting as we grow. And so we think we have more institutional capability to grow without necessarily going on a hiring spree in order to do so. But with that said, we're always looking for good partners and certainly we'll continue to add, but we'll do so when it's right and not just because we need to grow. I appreciate all that, Collar. Sorry, I asked a couple questions in one there. I think last quarter you kind of talked about a mid-single-digit loan growth forecast. Any reason that that would change, just given some of the momentum that you mentioned? Yeah, I'll just stop there. No, I think you can still count on that. It's Again, it's one thing to be able to produce the loans, but it's another thing to think about how that relates to your capital structure and how it relates to your organic core deposit growth. And we want to make sure that we maintain balance between all three components. So that's still our intention for the year. Okay, great. And then maybe just one quick final one for me just on the cost savings related to the deal. Any changes in expectations there, or is it all kind of status quo?

It's all status quo. We're doing our core conversion in May, and then we won't convert them until September. So we're not modeling in any material cost saves for 2025 from the Oakwood acquisition. That should set us up for 26 to pull through what we had advertised at announcements.

Great. I'll step back. Thanks for taking my questions. Thanks, Mike.

Your next question comes from the line of Seti Strickland with Hovde Group. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon.

Just wanted to start on the borrowings. I saw you reduced borrowings by about $10.3 billion this quarter. Can you just talk about how you think about those going forward and whether there's any major upcoming maturities that potentially pay down or kind of how you want to use borrowings and wholesale funding in general over the course of the next year or so?

Yeah, I think there's some opportunities with, I'll start with borrowings and kind of transition from there to other wholesale funding. I think we think there's an opportunity, and a caveat to this, Fetty, with As long as we continue to have success growing deposits organically like we have over the last year, I think that's going to present itself an opportunity to pay down about $50 million of FHLB maturities this coming year, which would be a fairly significant improvement to margin if we execute on that. I think with broker deposits, we see the same opportunity over the course of 2024, maybe not with as much pickup from the expense side of those deposits. Restructure those a little bit differently where there's maturities coming due every quarter. Opportunity in both FHLB and broker deposits to reprice. I think that's all caveated on what the current rate environment if it continues to stay like it is and if we continue to be successful, I think if we are, then you'll see us do what we did in the fourth quarters, pay down those as the opportunity presents itself.

Got it. Thanks for that.

And just curious, I appreciate all the detail on the deck on the loans coming up for renewal, but as these come up for renewal, do you have a sense kind of broadly speaking for how much you've, been keeping of the loans coming up for renewal versus kind of what's either rolled off, gone elsewhere? Just trying to get a sense for how much repricing opportunity there is and how much stays with the bank.

I think it's a good question.

We experienced about $200 million in loan maturities or renewals in the quarter, in the fourth quarter. I think that was higher than the other three quarters in the year. So I would say what we've done is done a good job of the relationships that we want to keep within the quarter. We've done a good job of doing that. I think in reality, to pin down an exact number of the $600 million that we would expect to renew, it'd be kind of tough because the market changes day to day almost. But we think we have a good shot at it. And with the weighted average, even from where we are, the pickup would be nice.

I know that's not a real direct answer, but that's a tough one to answer. No, fair enough. I guess I'll just... Sorry, go ahead.

Well, I was going to say, part of the point of the repricing opportunity is not just repricing loans that stay. It's also... the opportunity to reprice with new loans. And it's really, where is that funding going? Is the funding going to maintain older relationships at a new price, or is the funding going to new relationships at a new price? And the new price is the important part. And, you know, certainly it's better to keep a relationship than not. But what we want to be sure we try to do is continue to have that discipline on the margins.

Yeah, and Fetty, when I think about it from my seat to bring Jude's point home, I'm thinking about it. If we say we're going to grow 5% or 6% or whatever the number is in loans next year, I'm thinking about the net and the repricing of new and renewed. So the challenge for our bankers is just to make sure that we get to the number. Sometimes that's many different ways of how we get to the numbers.

Another way to think about that repricing opportunity, the reason we originally started looking at it was thinking through repricing cliff. Were we facing, in a particular quarter, so much repricing and the tension with rates being higher than they were when the loans were originally built? Would there be asset quality problems? It's been interesting to see that that has not been the case. Any bumps that we've had over the course of the year are really due to just normal banking credit risk as opposed to interest rate risk. And so that's the real good news there is that we've been working our way through that portfolio, whether it's maintaining the relationship and repricing it or encouraging those clients to find a home somewhere else. I think from a credit perspective and the health of the portfolio, it's been a big positive. And then you know, secondarily almost you have the opportunity to reprice at a higher level for income. But really the reason we began tracking you was more just to think about the credit exposure.

Yeah, Fetty, one other way we also think about, you know, we're not just thinking about repricing loans. We're thinking about the other side of the balance sheet as well on the liability side. So looking at time deposit maturities coming, you know, in the next 90 days or 120 days, I mean, that's a material number that almost matches the fixed rate loans that reprice as well. So there's opportunity on that side. So it's the net of the two is kind of the way we think about it. And we come out with a better relationship at a better price with an existing one. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we go to try to maybe use that capital for a new relationship as well. Teddy, one thing that I'd add is just to put the context of betas in this new down rate environment relative to the rising rate environment beta on our new low-needs. So rising rate environment, when rates were moving up, we were at around an 85% beta on new and renewed low-needs. That's holding true, roughly, on new and renewed low-needs in kind of this declining rate environment. And then put that a little bit more into context. we're getting closer to 100% betas on new offering rates on our interest-bearing deposit account.

So there's still that little spread baked into just the asset liability side of it.

But in terms of the actual dollars of loans that are repricing, we can quantify it much easier on the yield side from the beta perspective. But the dollar perspective, I'd say we're close to

100% kind of pull through and renewal on the dollars.

Got it. Thanks for the color, guys. Just one last quick one, just curious. I saw a greater share of loans came from Louisiana portion of the footprint rather than Texas this quarter, ex-Oakwood. You know, should we, what should we expect sort of going forward in terms of where loans are coming from the footprint? I guess is the pipeline maybe a little heavier Louisiana than it was before. Just was kind of curious on that.

I think each quarter you're going to see a little different mix, and we have a history of that. It's one of the reasons to have a diversified geography is that not only from a credit perspective, but also from a source of production perspective, and each is still a size where regions having different outcomes affects our overall in different ways, and I do think the downshifting of the focus on construction over the past few quarters logically impacts Dallas more because they had more construction than Louisiana for obvious reasons in terms of growth and development. And so it's not a surprise that there might be some rebalancing there in terms of our of our bookings, you know, I think as we kind of stabilize where we want to be on construction exposure as a concentration, then we shouldn't see as much negative impact to the downshifting away from construction. But we're always going to rotate, I hope we do, and we're continuing to invest in Louisiana even as we invest in Texas. and want robust shifting areas of growth. Do you want to add anything?

Yeah, I was just going to say that the volume that we talk about is the net growth rate. So to Jude's point, those large C&D loans are paying off. We're making new loans in Dallas. It's just replaced by a greater rate. And then the second part is the acquisition. They have a great book that we'll build on as well.

Yep.

Yeah, when you think about it, the amount of production that it takes to offset natural amortization that occurs in that book because of that significant growth over the years, there remains a lot of activity and a lot of production. Now it's just to keep a little bit of moderate growth going.

Yeah, and I think one thing we want to be sure that we do, and maybe we can provide more information on this in the future, but I think it's... We want to remain... focused on the granularity of the relationship. And even as we get bigger in terms of our aggregate asset size, we don't want our individual credit perspective to be in linear relationship with that overall balance sheet growth. We want to try to continue to serve in our sweet spot, and that means slightly smaller loans, which hopefully will be more profitable and long-term healthier from a credit perspective, but it does mean that you've got to do more of them to replace the same dollar amount, right? But one advantage of C&I is that they tend to be more profitable over time than construction, given the totality of the relationship, and we're excited about that.

But we'll continue to try to de-risk even as we grow. Got it. Thanks for the call, guys. I'll step back. Thanks, Freddie. Thanks, Freddie.

Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Emmanuel Anavas with DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for calling in.

I appreciate the quarterly NIM guidance of low single digits to mid single digits per quarter growth. What type of rate environment is behind that assumption?

I'm sorry, I didn't hear the last part of that.

Could you repeat? What rate assumptions have you made in terms of further decreases in the Fed Funds rate?

We're forecasting a flat rate environment. We think the work we've done on our balance sheet is becoming more neutral.

That's the most conservative way to approach it.

And what would be the impact if there were more cuts? How would that shift that kind of trajectory?

We should agree with basis one or two if there were for every cut going forward.

Okay. If I take your... If we stay flat... let's say three basis points per quarter, could you get to 375 NIM in fourth quarter 25?

I think that would be optimistic.

I think anywhere from the 365 to 375 range would probably be somewhere where we'd be pleased with that. Back to my earlier statement, I think In this environment, it's going to depend on how successful we are in attracting deposits, as well as pricing loans the right way. I think the yield curve movement that we've had lately, especially on the longer end, is going to make it challenging. Manuel, I'll give you a little bit more color. I think a 370 core by the end of the year isn't completely out of the realm of possibility. One thing that I would remind you about is our business manager factory-like business that we have where those fees are, they run through the margin, but they don't come with an actual balance that weighs against the earning asset base. So those, I think we mentioned last quarter, were a little elevated. depending on how some of those clients kind of progress over the course of the year, that could influence that core margin more so than you might think simply because of the fact that there's no actual earning assets that weigh down on the actual margin calculation.

But a 370 is not completely out of the realm of possibility.

And then the broker deposit and FHLB borrowing opportunity, is that assumed to happen, or is that if you get the excess deposit growth, you'd pay those?

I would say if you get the excess deposit growth, it would look a lot like what we did in the third and fourth quarter where we were able to pay those down. And if not, they would reprice, but you wouldn't get the full... benefit of the difference in the repricing from an organic deposit standpoint.

Okay. So that's not necessarily in core MIM guidance, but it is a potential positive.

Correct. Yep. It's an opportunity. Yep.

Got it. Got it. Just was trying to see what's in and what isn't. And I like that opportunity. It's a very nice one. Stepping over to net charge-offs, they stepped up a bit just this quarter. Any thoughts on how the charter officer provision should extend across the next year? Is it just kind of a modest blip and we'll normalize back down? What are your kind of thoughts on progression across the next year?

Yeah, I would say the fourth quarter for us was a little higher. I think it's a cleanup quarter for a few credits that we had outstanding in the settlement of one. I would call those kind of outliers. I think what we're expecting is to just continue to plot along like we have been in the past quarters. No material decline in the book at all.

We are big enough, though, that we will have an occasional one-off, and I always try to caveat this conversation with that, that things are going to happen. But we're not seeing any systemic issues, and we're not seeing any any blanket degradation, but certainly our special assets team is on the case and active and working through situations and did over the course of 2024 successfully and anticipate continuing that, but we need to stay vigilant because there will be one-off events, but I would absolutely agree with Greg that from a whole portfolio point of view,

Man, well, one thing, circling back to the margin, I realize that we have failed to mention the accretion outlook. And so in 2025, it's going to be, we see around $800,000 a quarter, a little over $3 million for the full year, which compares to a little over $4 million for 2024.

What was it in 2024? I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

It was a little over $4 million, not quite $4.5 million.

Okay. I appreciate this. I appreciate all the commentary. Just the last thing on the credit, these are really low levels, but the reserve did step up a bit. Are we likely to kind of stay at that level for now?

We're going to reserve it at 120 of every new loan produced, so we think that that will at least stay at that level and maybe slightly improve. It takes... To move it 1% at our size, it takes $800,000 more to end the model, so almost a million more. So I think it's a pretty big needle mover to get it to move up. But I think we're going to try.

We were really pleased, though, with the return to normality, essentially, of our overall model. loan loss provision. I've been almost one there. It's been a while because of our acquisitive history. It's been a while since we've been kind of at one or at fear because, as you all know, we had the loan loss provision and then we had credit marks associated with the acquired assets that don't show up in the provision. They're off balance sheet. So we've always tried to to make the math clear for everybody and show what the effective loan loss reserve was, which is about 20 basis points today, more than the loan loss revision is. But we finally found something positive in the CISO accounting rules. And that meant that with the opioid transaction, we were able to actually move the reserve over to the reserve. And so we'll benefit from a little normalization there, which we're excited about. but definitely want to kind of stay in that range, if not slightly above over the coming year.

I appreciate the commentary.

Thank you.

We have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Jude Melville for closing remarks.

Okay, good. Well, thanks, everybody, again, for participating, and thanks to our team for a great year. I think just in closing, you know, we spend so much time particularly on this call, thinking about the metrics and numbers and the models, and they're certainly very important, but I do like when I can to point out that first and foremost, we're still a relationship business, and if I think about the work that we did in 2024 and the good things that we accomplished, a lot of it really has to do with the building of relationships, whether that be a core set of investors that we didn't know before, or analyst relationships that we've enjoyed growing over time, or our regulatory relationships, or our employees. We have over 800 now, which is a lot compared to the 200 or so that we had four or five years ago, and to be able to manage through that and feel really good about the culture that's developing here. That's all about the relationships and that all those relationships lead to relationships with clients and we have more than we've ever had and so if I'm thinking about things we're proud of in 2024 and things that we're excited about in 2025, it really comes down to deepening and expanding those relationships and we appreciate y'all being a key component of that. So thank you for your time.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.