Southern Missouri Bancorp, Inc.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Southern Missouri Bancorp 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 on your telephone keypad to remove yourself from the question queue. I'd now like to hand over to your host, Stefan Chkaltovich, Executive Vice President and CFO to begin. Please go ahead, Stefan.

Thank you, Sammy. Good morning, everyone. This is Stephan Chikatovich, CFO with Southern Missouri Bancorp. Thank you for joining us today. The purpose of this call is to review the information and data presented in our quarterly earnings release, dated Wednesday, October 22, 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 the forward-looking statements contained in the press release. I'm joined on the call today by Craig Steffens, our Chairman and CEO, and Matt Funke, President and Chief Administrative Officer. Matt will lead off our conversation today with some highlights from our most recent quarter.

Thanks, Steffen. Good morning, everyone. This is Matt Funke. I'll start off with some highlights on our financial results for the September quarter, which is the first quarter of our fiscal year. Compared to the June linked quarter, we had relatively stable earnings and profitability with solid growth in net interest income, which stemmed from loan growth and further net interest margin expansion and a decline in operating expenses. These improvements were offset by a larger provision for credit losses and a decrease in fee income. The larger provision was attributable to the evolving economic environment, additions to individually reviewed loans, and loan growth. We feel we have good momentum on pre-provisioned net revenue to start the year, and we're optimistic about how we'll perform in the new fiscal year. The diluted EPS figure for the current quarter was $1.38, down one cent from the linked June 25 quarter, but up 28 cents from the September quarter a year ago. During the quarter, we continued working with a consultant to complete the renegotiation of a significant contract. We had recognized some expenses on this renegotiation in the linked quarter, but because this was on a contingency basis and because the renegotiation worked out well for us, we had additional expense to recognize in the current quarter. These totaled $572,000, reducing after-tax net income by $444,000, or $0.04 per fully diluted common share. Between the linked quarter and the current quarter, we have recognized right at $1 million in consulting expenses related to the contract renegotiation. But with the expected increase in revenues, which will flow through bank card interchange income, we estimate a less than 18-month earn back of the expense. Reported non-interest income was down by 9.7%, or $707,000 compared to the linked quarter. but was more than offset by lower non-interest expense of $925,000, or a 3.6% decrease quarter over quarter. Stephan will give some more color on these drivers in a bit. Net interest margin for the quarter was 3.57%, up from 3.47% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 25, the linked quarter, and from 3.34% in the year-ago quarter. Net interest income was up 5.2% quarter over quarter due to the NIM expansion and loan growth. As we indicated last quarter, we have updated our quarterly NIM calculation to annualized results for the actual day count, which should reduce volatility in the reported NIM due to differences in quarterly day counts. Under the old methodology, the current quarter's NIM would have been reported at 3.60%, but we're reporting at 357 due to the September quarter having 92 days. By contrast, the June quarter is reported at 347 under the new methodology, but under the old methodology with 91 days, it was originally reported at 346. And we've carried this updated annualization method over to all our profitability ratios for the current and historical periods in the earning release. On the balance sheet, gross loan balances increased by $91 million, or 2.2% during this first quarter, which would be 8.8% annualized. Loan balances increased by $225 million, or 5.7%, over the last 12 months. Growth in the quarter was led by non-owner-occupied CRE, 1-4 family residential, C&I, and multifamily loans. We experienced strong growth in our east region, where we have much of our ag activity, and our south region was just behind with good growth in those markets. Even with solid loan growth the last two quarters, our loan pipeline anticipated to fund in the next 90 days remains strong, totaling about $195 million at September 30th. The September quarter is historically our strongest period of loan growth, and we would expect to see this pace slow next quarter as we start receiving ag line paydowns and the general slowing in new projects in the winter months. That said, we had a great quarter of loan growth and feel optimistic about achieving mid-single-digit loan growth in the fiscal year. Deposit balances were relatively flat compared to the linked quarter, but up $240 million, or 5.9% over the last 12 months. Due to good deposit growth over the last year, we've been able to be less aggressive on promotional deposit pricing, and we've culled some higher-priced brokered CDs prior to maturity. Looking at our core deposit base, excluding brokered, we had an increase of about $14 million this quarter, driven mainly by savings account growth. We have $20 million in additional brokered CDs maturing by the end of the calendar year and about $18 million in brokered money market deposits expected to move out in October at the beginning of this new quarter. We'd expect to replace that with seasonal inflow of funds from ag customers and public units in the second quarter. Tangible book value was $43.35 per share. and increased by $5.09, or 13.3%, over the last 12 months. This was mostly attributed to earnings retention, while improvement in the bank's unrealized loss in the investment portfolio from the decrease in market interest rates contributed a little less than 20 cents of that year-over-year improvement. Additionally, in the current quarter, we've repurchased just over 8,000 shares at an average price of just under $55,000. for a total of $447,000. The average purchase price was 127% of tangible book value at September 30th. I'll hand it over now to Greg for some additional discussion.