Equity Bancshares, Inc.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Equity Bankshares' third 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 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Luke Pfeiffer, Director of FP&A and Investor Relations. Luke, please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining Equity Bank Shares' third 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, a 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. Joining me today is Rick Sims, our bank CEO, and Chris Navratil, our CFO. Our third quarter shows what happens when a larger franchise starts to work together. Net income was $26.8 million, or $1.29 per diluted share. Core earnings was $29 million, or $1.40 per share. And our core ROTC was 16.5%. Pre-tax pre-provision earnings were $36.9 million, the highest since we combined the three companies together, and our efficiency ratio was 54%. The story of the quarter is organic loan growth. This improvement is something that we have focused on for the last several years. Loans in our legacy markets grew at an annualized rate of nearly 12%. Production was the largest in our history. And for the first time since closing the acquisition, total loan balances increased during the quarter. Under Rick's leadership, Mark Parman, Justin Harris, Greg Kossover, Craig Dunn, and their teams have continued to make sales calls, cultivated relationships, and emphasize value creation for our customers on both lending and the deposit side. The results in the quarter reflect the effort and confirm the ability of our franchise to grow the balance sheet organically. Remaining focused on technology initiatives, finding ways to automate processes, enhancing lead generation, and expanding the services our customers rely on provides opportunity to add operating leverage and enhance shareholder returns as the balance sheet grows. I continue to be excited about the emerging technology will do in our industry and what it will do in our bank as we continue to pursue all that it offers. The funding market has tightened over the quarter as we have seen migration within both our legacy and acquired footprints. Declines are concentrated in large rate sensitive customers, including public funds, While our retail and treasury teams continue to grow relationships, full-service relationships which start with deposits are the focus of our teams, and that will never change. We have strong strategies to deal with the pricing challenges that come during these cycles in our industry. Our branch network during these periods is the strength of equity, and we are excited to operate during these periods as we think We have a competitive advantage. Mergers create financial statement noise, but strategically adding core deposits and expanding markets to the equity franchise is core to what we do. Execution on this strategy will provide opportunity to continue the success realized in the quarter. As you know, on September 3rd, we announced our agreement to merge Lincoln Bank Corp., The Holding Company of Lincoln Savings Bank, headquartered in Rhinebeck, Iowa, into equity. Lincoln has served the Iowa community since 1902 and operates 16 locations across Central and Northeast Iowa. The transaction gives us a meaningful presence in the Des Moines and Waterloo Cedar Falls area and a strong in-market deposit franchise. It is financially attractive and builds on the disciplined approach of our 15 prior transactions since 2015. Proforma will be approximately $9.1 billion as a company. We are on track to close Lincoln in the fourth quarter and momentum is building. We anticipate Lincoln will convert onto equity systems in the second quarter of 2027. We do not plan to close or consolidate any branches which protects the customer relationships that makes this franchise so valuable. Closing on time lets us capture cost savings and earnings accretion as early as possible. Lincoln brings exceptional banking talent, deep relationships and strong communities to the consolidated franchise. Under the continued leadership of their commercial and retail teams, we are excited for what this strategic combination will contribute to our growing company. I'm excited about the quarter and the trajectory of Equity Bank. Let me turn this over to Rick at this time.