Equity Bancshares, Inc.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Equity Bankshares second quarter 2026 earnings 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 the conference over to Luke Pfeiffer. Luke, please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining the Equity Bank Share second quarter earnings call. A quick note before we begin. Today's call is being recorded and is available via webcast at investor.equitybank.com, along with our earnings release and presentation materials. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed. After the presentation, we'll open the floor up for questions and discussion, the conversation we look forward to. With that, let me turn the call over to our chairman and CEO, Brad Elliott.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today's results are what we've been working towards since we announced the NBC and Frontier transactions. We knew what the numbers would look like once the merger noise was muted, and we could see the earnings power of the combined companies with Equity Bank. Our teams worked hard to get the Frontier transaction closed on January 1st and merged in the first quarter. With a desire to keep as much of the M&A noise in the first quarter to let everyone see a more normalized number this quarter. For the first time since closing, we're clearly showing investors what this franchise earns without the noise of merger charges. Day 2 provisions and integration costs overshadowing the combined earnings of equity. GAAP EPS was $1.27 per diluted share and ROATCE was 16.6%. Core EPS was $1.41 and ROATCE was 17.2. Our efficiency ratio for the quarter was 53.4%. Those are exciting numbers that we want to talk about today. When you have worked hard to negotiate and structure these transactions, and you can see firsthand the power of what happens when two complementary companies come together, or in this case, three, it means something special. It is exciting to see that the hard work shows up in the operating metrics. Margin was 4.36%, up three basis points from last quarter, driven by a more favorable earning asset mix we talked about on previous calls, and a higher bond discount accretion. As I said, the core conversion is complete and behind us. Now our teams are locked in on what we have been focused on, and that is organic growth. We have exciting things to talk about in this area. It always looks muted as we work to reset portfolios, but organic growth is our priority. Let me take a moment on a topic I'm genuinely excited about and one that Equity Bank is leaning into aggressively. AI and automation. This is not new for us. It has been core to how we built this company. When you build an organization around entrepreneurship, it naturally adapts to new technologies and new ways of thinking as they come along. We have always believed the banks that win will be the ones that grow the balance sheet and deepen relationships without growing the cost structure at the same pace. And technology is exactly how we do that. We are not talking about this We're actually doing it. Today, 15% of our staff are actively using Anthropic AI products, and 75% have Microsoft Copilot installed. I want to be clear, we do not plan to reach 100% with Copilot or Anthropic in our organization, as some roles in our company can't use it or benefit from it. So we're not adding the expense. We currently have six bots running in production and AI is actively supporting functions like loan review and M&A due diligence along with many other practical improvements across the bank. We have moved from theory or it being cool to the implementation phase. We are putting these tools to work across our operations, streamlining back office processes, speeding up onboarding and credit workflows, and giving time back to our bankers so they can spend it with what matters most, our customers. We have not yet fully tapped the expense reduction opportunity, and that is intentional. Phase one is implementation, stabilization, and proof of concept. Phase 2 is where the efficiency gains show up in the numbers. Honestly, this area excites me more than anything I've seen in my career since the adoption of personal computers. That era took us from assets per employee from under $1 million per employee to around $5 million per employee in a few short years. I believe we are on the front end of a similar shift, and Equity Bank is positioned to lead it. Let me turn it over to Rick, our bank CEO, to walk you through the bank operations. Rick?