Southern Missouri Bancorp, Inc.

Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Bella, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Southern Missouri Bancorp Earnings Conference Hall. All lines having placed a mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephan Shikatovich, Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

Thank you, Bella. Good morning, everyone. This is Stephan Shikatovich, CFO with Southern Missouri Bank Corp. 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, April 22, 2026, 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 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, Stephen. Good morning, everyone. This is Matt Funke. 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, our earnings and profitability were down a bit from an increase in operating expenses and a modest uptick in provision for credit losses, primarily driven by loan growth and higher reserve for pooled loans. This was partially offset by a lower provision for income taxes, better non-interest income, and slightly higher levels of net interest income. Although earnings and profitability were down slightly, the March quarter is typically our weakest quarter from a profitability perspective, and we actually had less impact from the seasonality than we typically see due to lower average cash balances as we decreased our brokered funding compared to the year-ago quarter and because we experienced stronger loan growth. With maintaining an ROA above 140 the last two quarters, we feel good about what we've been able to achieve in earnings and profitability this fiscal year, and we're optimistic about continuing this trend into the final quarter. We earned $1.60 diluted in the March quarter. That's down two cents from the linked December quarter, but it's up 21 cents from the March 2025 quarter. Net interest margin for the quarter was 3.67% as compared to 3.44% reported for the year-ago period and up from 3.57% reported for the second quarter of fiscal 26. Net interest income was up just under 1% quarter-over-quarter and up just over 9% year-over-year due to the increase in average earning asset balances and net interest margin expansion. Stephan will run through more of the moving parts of the NEM in a bit. On the balance sheet, gross loan balances increased by $96 million during the third quarter, and compared to March 31st of the prior year, gross loan balances are up just under $300 million, or 7.4%. Growth in the quarter was primarily in our loans collateralized by real estate with all segments up, with the exception of construction and land development loans, as we had a larger project move to a term financing facility. In addition, we also saw some growth in C&I and ad production loans as borrowers began the planting season later in the quarter. We experienced strong growth in our south region, followed by good growth in our north region. We had another good quarter for loan originations, generating about $282 million, which was seasonally strong, up $94 million from the same quarter a year ago. As we enter the fourth quarter, which has historically been a stronger quarter for loan originations, our expected loan pipeline for the next 90 days has increased to $178 million, up from $159 million expected at December 31st. Due to some anticipated larger loan payoffs in the fourth quarter, we could see a bit more muted loan growth, but with achieving 5.4% loan growth in the fiscal year to date thus far, we're in a good position to reach the higher end of our anticipated mid-single-digit loan growth range for fiscal 26. Deposit balances increased by about $33 million in the third quarter and increased by $80 million, or about 2% year-over-year. As we've been less competitive this year on local deposit rate specials, the quarter-over-quarter growth was primarily driven by broker deposits. Year-over-year broker deposits had declined just over $9 million, but they increased $36 million compared to the linked quarter end as local deposit rate competition was stiff and wholesale sources offered much more cost-effective funding. We plan to launch a new business account in the coming quarter, which, if successful over time, along with tweaks to our team member incentives, could help increase our balances in lower-cost operating accounts at the bank. Tangible book value per share was $45.80 at March 31st and has increased by $5.43, or 13.5% over the last 12 months. Finally, in the second quarter, in the third quarter, excuse me, we repurchased 156,000 shares at an average price of $61.97 per share for a total of $9.7 million. The average purchase price was 135% of our tangible book value as of March 31st. I'll now hand it over to Greg for some additional discussion.