Southern Missouri Bancorp, Inc.

Everyone, and thanks for joining the Southern Missouri Bank Corp Earnings Conference Call. My name is Sammy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star, followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star, followed by two. I will now hand over to your host, Stefan Chukamkovich, CFO, to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sammy. Good morning, everyone. This is Stefan Chukamkovich, CFO with Southern Missouri Bank Corp. Thank you for joining us. The purpose of this call is to review the information and data presented in our quarterly Army's release dated Monday, April 21, 2025, and to take your questions. We may make certain forward-looking statements during today's call, and we refer you to our cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements contained in the press release. I'm joined on the call today by Greg Steffens, our Chairman and CEO, and by Matt Funke, President and Chief Administrative Officer. Matt will lead off our conversation today with some highlights from our most recent quarter and fiscal year.

Thank you, Stephan. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'll start off with some highlights on our financial results for the March quarter, the third quarter of our fiscal year. Quarter over quarter, earnings and profitability improved as we benefited from a larger earning asset base driving an increase in net interest income, along with an expanded reported net interest margin, which resulted from a lower cost of funds and elevated fair value accretion income. All this despite the short day count in the quarter. With the earnings and profitability improvement in the first three quarters of our fiscal year, We continue to see positive trends going into the last quarter as we close out fiscal 25. We earned $1.39 diluted in the March quarter. That's up 9 cents from the linked December quarter and up 40 cents from the March 2024 quarter. Net interest margin for the quarter was 3.39% as compared to 3.15% reported for the year-ago period. and up from 3.36% reported for the second quarter of fiscal 25, the linked quarter. The reported margin benefited from the payoff of a loan from a prior acquisition that had a large purchase accounting mark. The net interest margin included 12 basis points benefit from fair value accretion. Excluding fair value accretion, the net interest margin would have been approximately 3.26%, which would be down one basis point from a comparable measure for the linked quarter. However, if we normalize the core margin for the day count, we believe we actually would have had a mid-single-digit increase quarter over quarter. Stephan will run through more of the moving parts of the NIM in a bit. Net interest income was up 3.5% quarter-over-quarter and up 14.4% year-over-year due to the increase in average earning asset balances and NIM expansion. On the balance sheet, gross loan balances decreased by $3.5 million compared to the December quarter, but increased by $252 million as compared to March 31, 2024. Year over year, that's growth of almost 7%, and we are going into what is historically a stronger fourth quarter for our loan growth with a healthy pipeline. Deposit balances increased by about $51 million in the third quarter and increased by $275 million, or about 7%, year over year. Strong deposit growth through the year has been primarily led by poor CDs from well-received race specials. Due to the lower short end of the curve, we've been able to originate or renew these CDs at lower rates, which has helped our margin. Largely due to the strong deposit growth, cash equivalents grew $81 million, or 56%, quarter over quarter, setting us up well for the next six months when we normally see stronger loan growth. Tangible book value per share was $40.37, and it's increased by $4.86, or almost 14% over the last 12 months. If you back out modest improvement in the security portfolios mark-to-market, we'd still be up almost 12% since this time last year. I'll now hand it over to Greg for some additional discussion.