QCR Holdings, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the QC-R Holdings, Inc. Second Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Todd Gippel, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our call today. I want to begin with an overview of our second quarter performance and then spend some time talking more deeply about the business. Nick will then provide additional details on our financial results. We delivered strong second quarter earnings, driving in an EPS improvement of 13% over the first quarter. These results were highlighted by a significant increase in net interest income, driven by both net interest margin expansion and strong loan growth, improved capital markets revenue, and disciplined non-interest expense management. We were pleased to deliver margin expansion during the quarter, as we continue to drive our cost of funds lower while maintaining stable loan yields in a persistently challenging inverted yield curve environment. Our loan growth also rebounded, reaching an annualized rate of 8% when adding back the impact from the planned runoff of M2 equipment finance loans and leases. This growth was driven by strong new loan production for the quarter. We continue to be optimistic about solid loan growth for the remainder of the year and are guiding to gross loan growth in a range of 8% to 10% in the second half of the year. While capital markets revenue from our LIHTC business came in below our historical run rate, it improved significantly from the first quarter and was up more than 50% on a link quarter basis as we move closer to more normalized levels. Our LIHTC pipeline is as strong as it has been for some time. This remains a highly sustainable and durable business for us, having successfully navigated challenges such as the pandemic, supply chain disruption, significant interest rate volatility, and more recently, the heightened level of economic and political uncertainty in Washington, D.C. We've emerged from this latest challenge with an even deeper network of developer relationships and a stronger LIHTC lending business. We believe that our capital markets revenue will continue to normalize over the next four quarters. Second quarter capital markets revenue ramped up close to historical levels as we expected and previously guided on our Q1 earnings call. Second quarter production was on pace for even stronger results, but notably two significant transactions that were expected to close late in Q2 shifted into early July. And as a result, we are off to a strong start here in Q3. Given the strength in pipeline, we are reaffirming our guidance for capital markets revenue to be in a range of 50 to 60 million over the next four quarters. In addition, we are also providing guidance over a shorter horizon and expect capital markets revenue for the third quarter to be fully back to a more normalized level and in a range of 13 to 16 million for the quarter. Our LIHTC production team has never worked harder to deepen relationships with existing clients and forge new partnerships with top tier LIHTC developers across the country. As a result, we remain very optimistic about the long-term durability and profitability of this business. Our non-interest expenses were again well controlled in the second quarter, supporting an adjusted ROAA of .29% and contributing to the substantial increase in our earnings per share on a late quarter basis. Asset quality remains excellent. While net charge-offs increased from Q1, they were tied to previously identified and fully reserved credits. Our provision for credit loss was essentially static from the prior quarter. We had a strong second quarter and our teams performed at a high level. We are a company built on relationships and these relationships matter most during times of uncertainty. I am grateful for our 1,000 employees that take great care of our clients, our communities and each other every day. Before I turn it over to Nick to provide more detail on our second quarter performance, I'd like to take a few minutes to share a broader perspective on our company and how I view our business today and the opportunities that lie ahead. I see our company is operating through three primary lines of business, traditional banking, wealth management and our LIHTC lending platform, which creates high quality assets and drives meaningful capital markets revenue. When I step back and view these three lines of business, I see tremendous opportunities in each. Our traditional banking model is built around separate, independent, autonomous community banks that attract top tier talent and the best clients in our markets. We hold number one market share in both the Quad Cities and Cedar Rapids, Iowa markets and number two market share in our Southwest Missouri market. In our largest MSA, Des Moines, Iowa, we are currently ranked sixth with plenty of opportunity for growth as we compete quite favorably with the larger banks in that market. Built upon our multi-charter business model that maintains the heart of community banking at the local level and the resulting strength of our local banking teams, combined with the significant resources of our $9 billion company, I expect continued strong organic growth in both loans and deposits across all of our markets. We have two significant opportunities to further enhance our operating leverage and financial performance in our traditional banking space. We are nearly halfway through our digital transformation journey as we create our bank of the future for our clients and our employees. We successfully transitioned all of our consumer clients to an improved online banking platform and are now preparing for the core conversion of our four banks into a unified, more efficient operating system. This new platform will improve performance at a lower cost and will help both our bankers and our shared services support teams work more efficiently and effectively. We expect to have this work completed and fully implemented in the first half of 2027, positioning us for improved operating leverage in 2027 and beyond. The second significant opportunity in our traditional banking business is to improve the right side of our balance sheet. It will require sustained focus and effort over several years, but it's our top strategic initiative across our company. I can tell you that every one of our 1000 employees here at QCRAGE understands that our number one focus is growing and strengthening our core deposit base. And I'm confident our people come to work each day focused on doing that. As a result, I expect an improved funding mix to further enhance our profitability in our traditional banking business. Over the past five years, we've significantly expanded our wealth management business, growing both AUM and revenue by compound annual growth rate of 10%, remarkable results by our team. Wealth management is the ultimate relationship business and we excel at this. Our relationships in the traditional banking space and with key professionals in each of our markets are uniquely personal and deep. These relationships provide us with an excellent pipeline of wealth management opportunities to fuel our continued success in this business. We also benefit from a competitive landscape in wealth management, where larger institutions often fall short on service and relationships, allowing us to consistently gain market share. Wealth management is highly accretive to ROA, as the AUM is of course off balance sheet. We like to say that this business is the ultimate ROA business as it has no A. We plan to continue investing in this business and I expect it to play an increasingly important role in driving top quartile returns. Our LIHTC lending business has proven remarkably durable through the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, significant interest rate volatility, and the recent political and macroeconomic uncertainty. We are devoting significant resources to this business and are building third party relationships that will allow us to expand our level of production of LIHTC perm financing and the capital markets revenue this business generates. We continue to grow our network of LIHTC developer relationships, which we believe over time will lead to larger pipelines and more robust production volumes. The need for affordable housing in our country remains significant and the newly enacted legislation has expanded the availability of affordable housing tax credits. The combination of this relentless long-term demand for affordable housing coupled with our deep relationships with many of the best LIHTC developers in the country is why we are optimistic about growing this business and further enhancing our already strong financial performance. In summary, I see it like this. We are focused on building something here that is materially different and significantly better than others who operate in these spaces in which we compete. Our ability to continue to leverage our many unique capabilities and competencies here at QCRIH is why we have such great confidence in our ability to maintain and extend our competitive position. Executing on these opportunities across all three of our core lines of business positions us to sustain our top tier financial performance and reward our shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Nick to provide further details regarding our second quarter results.

Thank you, Todd. Good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I would like to thank the board of directors and Todd for the opportunity to serve as chief financial officer of QCRI Holdings. I also want to express my appreciation for the warm reception I've received from the investment community. I'm honored to take on the CFO role of our company after a 20 year career here at QCRIH alongside a highly experienced and talented team. I'm excited to continue serving all our stakeholders as we build on QCRIH's strong momentum and drive future success. Now, moving to the financial results for the second quarter. We delivered adjusted net income of 29 million or $1.73 per diluted share. Net interest income for the quarter was 62 million, a $2 million increase from the first quarter driven by strong earning asset growth combined with margin expansion. Our NIM on a tax equivalent yield basis increased by four basis points from the first quarter and was at the high end of our guidance range. The increase in our NIM was driven by strong growth in both loans and investments along with higher yields on those assets. We also continued to benefit from lower deposit costs, which we've been able to steadily reduce as the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates last year. Our liability sensitive balance sheet and our progress in lowering deposit rates have resulted in strong deposit betas enabling us to capitalize on the declining rate environment. We are also well positioned to benefit from any potential future interest rate cuts. Our NIM TEY has now expanded by 21 basis points over the past five quarters. We expect our NIM TEY for the third quarter to be in the range of static to an increase of four basis points assuming no further Federal Reserve rate cuts during the quarter. Non-interest income totaled 22 million for the second quarter, driven in part by 10 million in capital markets revenue. During the quarter, we saw improved Y-Tech activity compared to the first quarter, resulting in a 3 million or 51% increase in capital markets revenue. Our pipeline continues to improve as clients adjust to evolving market conditions. We believe the long-term demand and our growing backlog for new deals will continue to provide robust support for our Y-Tech lending program. Our wealth management business generated 5 million in revenue for the second quarter, consistent with the first quarter. As compared to the like period in 2024, wealth management revenue has grown by 8%, reflecting the strength and momentum of this business. Our continued investment and wealth management is paying off. Reinforcing our position as a trusted local partner to our clients. Notably, the strategic expansions we announced on previous calls in central Iowa and southwest Missouri are attracting new client relationships. Our consistent AUM growth in our markets not only strengthens our foundation, but also helps temper revenue pressure during periods of broader market volatility. Now turning to our expenses. Non-interest expense for the second quarter was 49.6 million, an increase of 3 million, coming in just below the lower end of our guidance range of 50 to 53 million. This increase was primarily driven by higher capital markets revenue and strong loan growth, resulting in an improved ROAA, which drove higher variable compensation. Professional and data processing expenses also increased and were related to our digital transformation. Compared to the first half of 2024, non-interest expenses remain well-controlled and are down 9% on an annualized basis. Our highly incentivized variable compensation structure is designed to enhance operating leverage and provide expense flexibility across changing revenue cycles, rewarding our employees only after value has been delivered to our shareholders. We remain disciplined in managing core operating expenses while continuing to invest strategically in technology and automation to further support our high-performing operations team. These investments are essential to strengthening our operating leverage and supporting our multi-charter community banking model. As Todd noted, we are making progress on our comprehensive multi-year digital transformation initiative that encompasses several strategic projects. We will continue to manage expenses with discipline. Our updated non-interest expense guidance is projected to be in the range of 52 to 55 million for the third quarter. This updated guidance captures costs associated with our digital transformation and assumes both capital markets revenue and loan growth are within our expected guidance ranges. Moving to our balance sheet. During quarter, total loans grew by 137 million or 8% annualized when adding back the impact from the planned runoff of M2 equipment, finance loans and leases. Our loan growth was driven both by our LIHTC and traditional lending businesses. Since 2023, loan securitizations have played a key role in supporting the continued success of our LIHTC business, which remains a significant driver of capital markets revenue. As our LIHTC permanent loan pipeline continues to build, we expect our next securitization to close in early 2026. Following the robust deposit growth of 276 million or 16% annualized in the first quarter, we retain the majority of those balances throughout the second quarter. Total deposits declined slightly by 19 million or 1% on an annualized basis during the second quarter, while average deposit balances rose by 72 million compared to the first quarter. Year to date, core deposits have increased by 311 million or 9% annualized. Turning to our asset quality, which remains excellent. Total non-performing assets declined 5.5 million or 11% during the second quarter. Our total NPAs to total assets ratio also improved to 46 basis points, which is approximately half of our 20-year historical average. Total criticized loans increased 9 million or 10 basis points to .16% of total loans and leases. Net charge-offs increased by 2 million, primarily driven by the charge-off of loans that had been previously fully reserved. Additionally, over half of our total remaining NPAs are comprised of just five relationships. Total provision for credit losses of 4 million was down slightly from the previous quarter. The allowance for credit losses to total loans held for investment was 1.28%. We continue to closely monitor asset quality across all business lines as part of our historically strong credit culture. Our tangible common equity to tangible assets ratio increased by 22 basis points to .92% at quarter end. This increase was driven by strong earnings as AOCI remained consistent during the quarter. Our common equity tier one ratio increased 16 basis points to 10.43%. And our total risk-based capital ratio increased eight basis points to 14.26%. The improvement in our regulatory capital ratios was also driven by our strong earnings. We remain committed to growing our regulatory capital and we consistently evaluate our capital mix to support both our business model and growth objectives while benchmarking against peers. Additionally, we plan to call and replace our 70 million of subordinated debt in September. This will maintain our current tier two total risk-based capital levels and we expect to do so at a favorable fixed rate. We delivered another strong increase in tangible book value per share, which rose by $1.64, reflecting 13% annualized growth for the quarter. Over the past five years, TBV has grown at a compound annual rate of 12%, highlighting our solid financial performance and long-term focus on creating shareholder value. Finally, our effective tax rate for the quarter was 5%, up from 1% in the prior quarter. The link quarter increase is primarily due to higher pre-tax income from higher capital markets revenue. These factors increase the mix of our taxable income relative to our tax-exempt income. Our tax-exempt loan and bond portfolios have consistently supported a low tax liability. Given a more normalized mix of revenue, in line with our guidance, we expect our effective tax rate to be in the range of 6% to 8% for the third quarter of 2025. With that added context on our second quarter results, let's open the call for your questions. Operator, we are ready for our first question.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Our first question will come from Damon Demonte with KBW. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a nice quarter. I guess the first question just related to the margin and the outlook, I think the guide was for flat up four basis points here in the third quarter. Can you just talk about some of the dynamics behind that that give you confidence that that can continue to kind of grind higher?

Yeah, good morning, Damon. Thank you for the question. We are guiding static to four basis points and this assumes no Fed rate cuts. So as you think about Q2 and our performance there, our peak NIM month in the second quarter was June and that was a 349 and that compared to 346 for the quarter. So that gives us confidence on some further expansion here in Q3. We have about 350 million of loans scheduled to mature in Q3. About 110 million of that is fixed at a 605. Now with payoffs and pay downs that 110 fixed generally would grow to about 300 million. So we expect to be able to pick up about 50 basis points on that fixed portfolio, the floating portfolio, what is scheduled to mature, we believe we can replace at similar rates. So not a big change there. So when you take into account also on the funding side, I think we're gonna continue to manage our interest bearing non-maturity deposits. The team is doing a great job of fighting for every basis point there. I think the biggest impact we'll see in that space here in Q3 is more related to our CD portfolio that's scheduled to mature. We've got about 350 million of CDs maturing in the third quarter. That's a weighted average rate of about 430 and we think we can shave about 30 basis points off of that. So a similar amount in Q4 scheduled on the CD portfolio to roll off, not quite a 30 basis point delta on those, but closer to 10 basis points. So we think we can continue to move the needle here, especially as we look at Q3.

Great, appreciate that color. And if we do have a couple of rate cuts in the back half of the year, given the liability sensitive position, is it fair to assume a little bit bigger lift on the margin?

Yeah, no, that's fair. And Damien, I think as we've talked on other earnings calls, we are and continue to be, have more rate sensitive liabilities here today. So when we think about 25 basis point, potential Fed cut, we think that's about two to three basis points of margin, about 1.2 to 2 million of NII dollars. So if the yield curve steepens a bit, we'd expect to be at the high end of that range and maybe some upside. If we kind of maintain yield curve where we're at today, probably closer to the lower end of that range.

Got it, okay, great. And then I think in the comments you guys noted that your next securitization is expected to be in early 2026. Are you at a point yet where you can kind of talk about the sizing of that?

Sure, Damien. Yeah, we expect that to close in the first quarter of next year. And one of the reasons we pushed that back into the first part of 26 is we want that to be a very sizable securitization. Right now we're targeting 350 million as kind of the floor there. That's probably around where we will land. The main reason we want that to be larger is we've discovered that we get much better economic execution with a larger securitization. And we intend to sell the B piece in that securitization. So better economics on the A give us more room and more confidence that we're gonna be able to sell the B piece. And in doing both that 350 million notional will free up about 40 basis points of CET1. So for all those reasons, we're pushing it back a little bit to accumulate a bigger pool.

Got it, okay, great. And then just to sneak in one more question on the wealth management. It sounds like things are continuing to progress well there. Is it fair to kind of assume near double digit growth rate kind of going forward in this area?

Damien, we're very pleased with the performance of wealth management over the last five years. I think I mentioned in our opening comments that it's been a 10% CAGR over five. Yes, our expectation is that we'll continue to grow

double

digits, 10%ish or more. We actually added 234 new relationships and a half a billion in new AUM in the first half of the year. So really on pace with the growth from 24. I will tell you, of course, the law of large numbers makes that a bit tougher each year. We're at 6.7 billion in AUM, so that hurdle of 10 gets higher and higher all the time, but we've invested a lot in this space. We're really good at it. We have great teams. I think I mentioned in the opening comments that the competitive landscape really favors us as well. The larger bank competitors in the space just are not keeping up service levels. So 10%ish is our expectation.

Great. Okay, well, thank you very much for all the call here. I appreciate it. Thanks,

Damon.

Thanks, Damon.

Our next question will come from Nathan Race with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Morning, Nate. Morning. I'm curious, just kind of the appetite for buybacks going forward. Obviously, you guys are building capital and have a securization teed up early next year, so just curious in terms of maybe the appetite to get in the market to buy back a stock can maybe provide some downside support during certain periods of volatility that we've seen here today.

Sure. Thanks for the great question, Nate. So TCE is at 992, CET1 at 1043. Both of those are up around 40 vips since the end of last year. So we are building capital at a fast clip with solid earnings and our low dividend payout. So we are accumulating capital nicely. Really the issue for us while we've been on the sidelines a bit here is TCE and CET1 decoupled a bit as we were securitizing. We weren't selling the B piece on our four prior securitization. So we were getting gap capital relief, which is why TCE has grown so significantly, but we weren't getting regulatory capital relief, and that was holding CET1 down. We do expect to sell that B piece in the next securitization. I already mentioned we'd get a pretty big lift in CET1 at that point. So we see a path to where those are getting back more in alignment, the gap capital and CET1 red cap. So we do see some optionality with capital coming back into the picture for us. I don't think that we necessarily have to actually achieve it in the first part of next year, but we can now see it and have a clear path to getting there. So we are going to be evaluating this here in the back half of the year in terms of deployment of capital. We know our TCE is gonna creep up over 10%. That's a good thing. We are clearly able to take care of our organic growth. We don't really have M&A on the short-term horizon. So then it comes to dividends and buybacks, and we're gonna be evaluating that here back half of the year.

Okay, that's really helpful, Coller. I appreciate that. And then, Todd, you mentioned this in your prepared comments around the implications from the latest legislation in terms of what that implies for affordable housing developments going forward. Just curious if you're seeing any of that come through in your pipeline more recently or maybe what you think that could suggest in terms of maybe driving higher volumes and just overall capital markets revenue, perhaps longer term.

Sure, Nate. Thanks for asking about that. I will tell you, we don't anticipate that impacting us here yet this year. Maybe not even for quite some time. Might be a year or more out. But the implications are very significant long-term. And it's one of the reasons we have confidence that we're gonna be able to start growing this business. The OBBB really did two things. It increased the 9% credits in LIHTC by 12%. And it reduced the threshold for qualification for the 4% credit. Really made it easier for more projects to comply with the requirements. And a recent study by Novogradic who really follows this industry, they think that long-term, and so again, I would say this is probably end of 26 into 27, but long-term they think this will grow LIHTC allocations from 29 billion, which is really where they've been here for a while, to as much as 37 billion, a potential 20% increase in LIHTC credit. So it was a very good outcome, both from the perspective of what got in the bill. I think even more so optically, it was great to see that there was unified support for affordable housing in DC. That was a great thing to see.

Hi, Nathan, this is the operator just confirming. Do you have any other further questions?

I'm all set, thank you.

All right, thank you so much. Our next question will come from Brian Martin with Jani Montgomery. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Good morning, Brian. And welcome, Nick, and congratulations. You know, just one for me was just on the margin, kind of as you look out, either Nick or Todd, I guess if you look out into the outquarters with maybe less rate cut rates, less rate cuts than kind of people were expecting. If you can just talk about just the path of the margin or trajectory kind of as you go out into 26, how we should be thinking about that if the cuts don't materialize.

Yeah, thanks, Brian. When we think about, you know, maybe Q4 and into 26, and assuming again that yield curve kind of stays where it is today, you know, I think it is becoming more challenging to continue to expand NIM into those areas without a future Fed rate cut. But again, we do continue to focus on every basis point on our funding side. And so, yeah, I think that is how we're viewing it right now. And I guess time will tell here shortly if we see some Fed action and how we'll think about that.

Okay, yeah, and then just maybe the, you mentioned the subject, just kind of the timing of that. And then I think the securitization, I guess, can you quantify any, you know, if you get economically, you know, the benefit of that, you know, how we should think about that. I think part of that will play into the margin as well, but just how we should think about that in the beginning of next year.

Sure, yeah, Brian, the securitization of that 350, in terms of the transaction itself, we would anticipate with very good economics on the APs and being able to sell the BPs, we think at a minimum, we should be able to break even on that transaction. But again, being able to fully sell the BPs would be a great outcome for us. I would tell you, I don't know that we would expect that single transaction to notably impact NIM percentage. Certainly we'll pull back earning assets for a bit, but what we're very happy about is with the new pipelines we're seeing in LIHTC, we anticipate filling that up pretty quickly. So I think we're gonna get back to the point where we're using securitizations to simply make room for more production. So while you'll see a little bit of a pullback in earning assets, we think that hole gets filled in pretty quick with the ramp up of existing construction debt that we put in place. So we're very pleased to be lining up this one big securitization. When we started doing this, we talked about after a couple, we'd have it all figured out. This will be our fifth one. I think we are really starting to get it figured out. We thought it might be efficient to just simply do a smaller one each quarter or a couple of times a year, but we're likely gonna continue to do larger ones less frequently. So that's gonna provide us with a better outcome. And

Brian, I'll chime in on the sub debt question you had there. So we have 70 million that becomes callable in September, 50 million of that on September 15th and 20 million of that on September 30th. We do intend to call the entire 70 million in replace. Right now, I think we're targeting September 15th for that replacement of the full amount. We think based on some market deals that have closed so far here more recently, we're targeting something in the low sevens. And that's about 200 basis points less than if we allowed those sub debt tranches to convert to floating here and also allows us to retain some of that tier two capital for our total risk base. So that's kinda our view in the landscape and the timing there for sub debt.

Gotcha, nope, that's helpful. And then just the last one for me, just on the loan growth, just the outlook. I mean, just the breakdown of the growth this quarter, the LIPAC versus kind of traditional kind of, how did that look? And then just the outlook going forward, just how do you expect the growth to be driven in terms of is the bulk that's still gonna continue to be the LIPAC or that you're seeing a pickup in the traditional side?

Sure, thanks, Brian, for that question. We did have solid growth of 8% in the most recent quarter when you carve out the impact of the M2 equipment runoff and again, that's going as scheduled and as planned. The growth was in CRE, both traditional banking and LIHTC. CNI backed up a bit. We still had some very nice new production in CNI with new and some existing clients, but we continued to see strong payoffs in CNI. I just give you a little bit of color. I was at one of our subbank board meetings just yesterday. A comment from the team was they had three great clients with really strong balance sheets, very strong performance. They simply decided to pay us off when their loans were up for renewal. Their rate was going from a high three or four handle to a high six or a low seven rate. They had the cash available. They just simply paid us off, told us they'd be back when they do something new or have another need or if rates come down, they might relever the balance sheet again, but I think that's why loan growth's a bit soft across the industry right now is, for the most part, clients are doing really well. They have strong balance sheets, a lot of cash, and some of them are just opting into taking some leverage out when the new rate gets in front of them. So I do think we'll continue to see some strong new production in CNI, in CRE, in traditional banking, but yes, certainly the LIHTC ramp up will continue to help us with that eight to 10% rate, and I do think it's fair that a big chunk of that eight to 10% gross loan rate growth would come from LIHTC, and honestly, that's been the case here for a while now. Yeah,

okay, and I'll, that's it. Just one, if I can sneak it in, Todd, and I think you already answered it, but your comment about the capital deployment sounds like even despite it, an environment that's picking up in terms of potential M&A, you're still kind of in the camp that it's not a priority and not really a near-term likelihood, given kind of the dynamics in front of you currently. Is that accurate, based on your earlier comments? Yeah, Brian, I think that's fair.

I'd say it this way, we're open to M&A, certainly, and can't, the conversations are ramping up around the industry. I think everyone's seeing that in the in-house deals, but our strike zone is very tight for something that works for us. We have great momentum and a lot of organic opportunities to grow EPS and TBV per share, so it's gonna really have to be a strong opportunity for us to consider it. Our interest would be in central Iowa, certainly, or a fifth new market, similar in size and opportunity to our existing markets, but it's gonna have to be a very strong fit strategically, culturally, financially. We do not want it to distract us from building and growing EPS and TBV, so we're open to it. Narrow strike zone, since we don't have anything really on front burner or even back burner at this point, that then tips us over to be thinking about spending some of the capital versus using it for M&A.

Gotcha, thanks for taking all the questions, guys. Thanks, Brian.

Thanks, Brian. Our next question will come from Daniel Tomeo with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Thank you, good morning, guys.

Morning, David. Morning.

So you guys actually have, you got in front of this first question, which in part, which you talked about all the opportunities from the tax bill and changes on the, related to the light tech industry. There was also, there's been some, you know, rumors, or you know, there's a Wall Street Journal article about potential budget cuts to HUD. Curious if you have any thoughts on what that could mean for the industry, if that might be an offset, or if it could have some impact on either, you know, there were some thoughts that could impact credit of those multifamily loans, not that that's a big part of what you guys are holding, but there, you know, some of the light tech loans are on the balance sheet, obviously. Just curious if you have any thoughts on that

side of,

you know, changes to the industry.

Sure, Danny, I'm really glad you asked that, actually, because I know in April with first quarter, we talked about HUD being a bit of a headwind for us. That has gotten better. What I will tell you is only about a third of our transactions involve HUD. There is something related to the capital stack or the requirements of that specific transaction where we need a HUD sign-off for clear to close, and that was holding us up in the first quarter. That's gotten better, more responsive. But realistically, if there's more disruption at HUD, it's just gonna take longer to get some of those deals clear to close. We don't really anticipate or honestly fear anything in terms of government disruption related specifically to light tech, and again, when I answered that question about the new bill, I mentioned optics, and I think it was clear to me that that was one of the big wins, that the optics around that were that both sides of the aisle really believe that affordable housing continues to be important. The light tech program is the best way to provide it. They've freed up some more credits. So there could be some disruption if HUD goes through some of those things. Honestly, I think it's probably gonna more specifically impact section eight housing and some workforce housing that we don't really play in. I think I'm fairly optimistic about that, but with what's going on in DC, we will continue to be vigilant, keep our ears to the ground a bit, but I'm glad you asked, Danny, because I view it as a big win coming out of this new legislation that both sides of the aisle agree this was a very important thing for the entire country.

That's helpful, appreciate your thoughts there. You've also talked quite a bit today about the B pieces and how you're planning to sell those portions when you're in the process of the securitizations. Just curious what you still have on your balance sheet from prior securitizations in terms of B pieces, and if there is plans to sell those, and if they do, where do you think that would,

the

impact in terms of financials from the sale of those B pieces?

Yeah, Danny, I'll start, Todd will add some comments here, but we've done four securitizations since 2023, and there's about 650 million of loans that we pushed off the balance sheet. We're retaining on the B piece about just over 80 million that we hold as a trading security in our investment portfolio. Those yield about 9% on a TUI basis, so we're getting paid nicely for those, to hold those, but the capital associated with that really reverts back to that 650 million of loans, almost as if they're still on our books. So that's the decoupling that Todd mentioned from our TCE and our CET1 ratio, it's really directly because of that. So selling off some B piece on a future securitization and maybe some existing certainly can help that decoupling minimize a bit here.

Yeah, so Danny, you asked about our interest in perhaps selling some of these. They are a very good yield because we're in the business, we understand the risk, and even though those are the first loss tranches, hence the B piece, feel really good about the asset quality there. We have talked about perhaps selling some of the existing B pieces to be transparent. If we did that, we would take a modest loss to do that because of those being the first loss tranche. I think what it's gonna come down to is, I think we're going to fix that with the sale of the B piece and the future securitization and likely not feel compelled to sell one of the existing B tranches. Having said that, if we feel like we get some good economics and we have an investor or honestly, sometimes it's a developer that wants to come back in and buy the B piece, if they have some deals in that B piece tranche, they have more confidence to buy it. So we may consider it. I'm sorry to not give you a straight up answer on that. It is something we could consider doing, but we think sale of the large B piece and the large securitization in the first quarter is really our main focus.

Got it, okay. So may continue with what's on the balance sheet, but going forward, trying to sell off the full piece.

In future, yes, Danny, in future securitizations, I think you can count on that from us.

Okay, great. And then lastly, you're crossing, if you, I guess you'll be close to nine and a half billion, you're pushing up on 10 billion. You've talked about this in the past, but just curious where you guys are now in terms of Durbin Impact and anything else on the expense side as you cross 10 billion.

Sure, thanks Danny. We believe that maybe 27, more likely 28 when we cross. Regulatory requirements and the Durbin Impact are really the following year, so it's out of ways for us. Right now, we continue to feel like that would be around three million of Durbin Impact on interchange revenue. I think the good news for us is that's roughly two good sized light tech deals to make up that $3 million. So we feel like we've got other forms of non-interest income to help mitigate that impact, but it would certainly lower our interchange revenue. And again, that estimate would be about three million. We expect to have the expense fully loaded by then. We've already been doing that. We've done that over the last two years already. We're staying within the guardrails on non-interest expense growth, so the buildup of these capabilities we need isn't really noticeable, and that is our plan. So we've already been making the investment in talent, continue to ramp this up. We'll be fully ready when we need to be. We have a great relationship with the Chicago Fed, both the Chicago staff, and we're blessed to have a Des Moines, Iowa office of the Chicago Fed as well. And they have worked with our banks in Iowa for our entire history. So we're not overly concerned about crossing 10 billion. We're not gonna feel like we've got outside non-interest expense growth leading up to that. We think we're gonna be fully baked in when it happens.

Danny, I would just add here, as part of our digital transformation, we had the opportunity to renegotiate our debit card contract. So we'll see some upside from that when it comes to crossing over 10 billion here as well. So some of the impact could be muted a little bit as a result of stronger fee income from that.

Got it. Okay, very helpful. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. That's all for me.

Thanks, Danny. Thank you. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question will come from Jeff Rules with DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. Question on the credit side. I wanted to see if there was correlation on the non-performing loan decline and the net charge-offs, and maybe if so or if not, the makeup of the charge-offs from a segment basis. Sure. Thanks, Jeff.

Yeah, very high degree of correlation there. We essentially got a little more aggressive with charging off some of the M2 equipment finance, NPAs that were already fully reserved. So NPAs came down, our ACL percentage came down because they were fully reserved and baked in. We didn't need to re-provide, so provision expense was static even with charge-offs up. Really just trying to clean up the pool of those loans. I would tell you for the most part, those charge-offs were that M2 equipment finance segment of our portfolio, not really other charge-offs to speak of. And I would tell you, glad you asked about M2, our projections were always that the back half of this year, we were gonna start to see those NPAs and those charge-offs start to slow. And our projections right now are lining up with that. Instead of charge-offs in that segment to be more like three or four million a quarter, we're anticipating that those are gonna roll down to more like two or three million per quarter. That is starting to soften up. And that was part of the reason we wanted to be aggressive in charging off some of the ones fully reserved. The NPAs coming in new are slowing, so the velocity of that is getting better. And we'll be down to about 190 million in that portfolio at the end of the calendar year. So about 46% of that's run off. And we're happy

about that. Got it. I maybe I wanna stay on credit, but I wanna circle back to the M2 piece. But the criticized increase, the makeup of those loans that came in is, what were those? Sure,

yeah, sure. And actually that's a easy question because it was really just one credit that consisted of that increase. So criticized went up 13 million, one large deal getting downgraded to special mention. It's well collateralized at 1.4 times the loan amount on a very recent appraisal. And we're just gonna nudge that client out of the bank. We've already had that conversation. They are looking for other financing. We think with the amount of collateral that they have, somebody else will end up taking this deal. We do not expect any provision for it and loss from it, but based on the performance of that credit, it did get downgraded. And we're working pretty hard to nudge it out by the end of the year.

A CRE year, what was the?

Yeah, actually, we don't do much of this, but it was an ag related loan in Missouri, had not been a problem for a long, long time. We weren't real happy with the performance we were seeing. And so we've asked that credit to exit. And again, based on the strength of the underlying collateral and its land and land value, we think it's gonna be pretty easy to get that moved. And the borrower is communicating well with us on that.

Gotcha, thanks. And over to the M2 and growth question. Todd, you mentioned a gross 8 to 10% growth rate for the second half of this year. I guess that's, is the net of the M2 runoff? Is there anything else that would drive kind of against the eight to 10? Or is that the piece that we're largely talking about?

Yeah, Jeff, great question on that so it can be more clear. It would really be the runoff of M2 that would net that down, certainly until we get to securitization offtake. So that runoff for Q3 is projected to be a little over $30 million is the bogey there. And roughly the fourth quarter would be a little more modest than that 28. So it is rolling downhill. So the impact on the net loan growth is more modest now. So if you're modeling that number, it'd be let's say 32 million in Q3 and 28 million in Q4.

Great, thanks Todd. Thanks Jeff.

Thanks Jeff. With no further questions, this will conclude our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Todd Gippel for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining our call. We appreciate your interest in our company. Have a great day and we look forward to connecting with you very soon, thanks.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.