Business First Bancshares, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Desiree and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Business First Bancshares second quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question again, press the star one. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Matt Seeley, Senior Vice President, Director, Corporate Strategy and FD&A. You may begin.

Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining. Earlier today, we issued our second quarter 2026 earnings press release, a copy of which is available on our website along with a 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.b1bank.com. Please also note our safe harbor statements are available on page 6 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 Bancshares Chairman and CEO Jude Melville, Chief Financial Officer Greg Robertson, Chief Banking Officer Philip Jordan, and President of B1 Bank, Jerry Vascocu. After the presentation, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have. And with that, I'll turn the call over to you, Jude.

Okay, thanks, Matt. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us today. B1 Bank had an encouragingly solid second quarter, one that met or exceeded the progress we've been articulating for you over the past few quarters and one that positions us well for a strong second half of 2026. As an example, we returned to our normalized rate of loan production, driving a healthy increase in net interest income. In addition to the production in the second quarter, which came in a relatively balanced way across our footprint, we built a significant pipeline, particularly in the Houston area, that we expect will translate into sustained growth for the remainder of the year. Margin expanded by eight basis points during the quarter, driven partly by disciplined loan and deposit pricing. We also executed a relatively sizable loan sale that we believe will create additional margin opportunity as we redeploy those proceeds into higher-earning assets over the next two quarters. Our team made meaningful progress on the credit front, reducing non-performing loans by about 30% in line with the progress we forecasted at the beginning of the quarter, and we anticipate continued improvement on that front over the remainder of the year. Revenue from our financial services group is running roughly 20% ahead of last year's pace at the halfway mark of the year. Near the end of the quarter, we added a new partner and product, Jeff Fair with American Planning Corp., which provides CFO-type consulting services to community banks within our footprint. I say new, but Jeff is actually a 20-year collaborator with us, which gives us great confidence in partnering to offer his services under the SSW umbrella, bringing the number of banks we serve through our financial services group platform to over 200. If there was a headline disappointment in the quarterly numbers, it was in two areas. First, deposits. I point out, however, that a quarter of the decline was purposeful. reflecting our pay down of higher cost broker deposits. Our non-interest bearing accounts were positive for the quarter, leading to a slight decrease in overall deposit costs, and the movement was largely seasonal, something we see every second quarter, with deposits already beginning to move back in materially over the course of July. Second, expenses ran a little higher than normal, but there's important detail beneath the headline worth exploring. The costs we expect to be recurring, including salaries and related expenses, were flat. with the increase tied to upfront marketing spend and elevated legal fees connected to the resolution of a large non-performing credit. Two costs that, while core, we don't expect to see again at this scale in the third quarter. I'm going to add the weeds now, as I'm sure we'll cover this in more detail during Greg's portion of the call, but I wanted you to know that, all in all, the quarter was a positive step towards increased profitability through earning asset growth, expense control, and continued asset quality improvement over the course of the year. Finally, wrapping up my list of positive developments this quarter, we remain on track for a successful conversion of our progressive bank partnership on August 10th. On that subject, I'd like to mention something that I don't know that we've highlighted directly in this forum before. We tend to get more questions about, and therefore talk more about, our investments in Dallas and Houston, and they certainly warrant the attention. I'd like to point out that there are also significant and positive things happening in Louisiana right now, creating credible tailwinds for that part of our footprint. The state has attracted roughly $150 billion in announced capital investments over the past 18 months, anchored by Meta's data center project in Richland Parish, which the company expanded just last week to 5 gigawatts of capacity and more than $50 billion in total investment, up from its initial $28 billion commitment, making it one of the largest data center developments in the world. The expansion is expected to support roughly 7,500 construction jobs and about 1,000 permanent operations positions. Meta also announced more than a billion dollars in related infrastructure investment for roads, water, and wastewater systems, along with a new energy agreement with Entergy Louisiana projected to save customers more than $2 billion over 20 years. The state's seeing a broader wave of activity in AI, data infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing that's driving construction activity, job creation, and demand for commercial banking services across our markets. We view this sustained investment as a meaningful long-term positive for the communities we serve and for our growth opportunity as a bank. Particularly since the largest of these investments sits in the heart of Northeast Louisiana, we are combining the progressive footprint with our legacy locations. We will have the largest branch network of any community bank in the area. We will continue to invest in the region, including just this morning concluding an agreement to serve as the official banking partner for the University of Louisiana Monroe's Athletic Department. So congratulations to our team for a solid quarter. We look forward to maximizing the investments we've made to continue building this franchise on behalf of our shareholders, our employees, our regulatory partners, and the communities we serve. With that, I'll turn it over to Greg to walk through the financial results in more detail and look forward to your questions.