SouthState Corporation

Thank you for standing by. My name is Eric and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the South State Corporation Q2 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Will Matthews. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to South State's second quarter 2025 earnings call. This is Will Matthews and I'm here with John Corbett, Steve Young and Jeremy Lucas. We'll follow our typical pattern of brief remarks followed by Q&A. I'll refer you to the earnings release and investor presentation under the investor relations tab of our website. Before we begin our remarks, I want to remind you that the comments we make may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws and regulations. Any such forward-looking statements we may make are subject to the Safe Harbor rules. Please review the forward-looking disclaimer and Safe Harbor language in the press release and presentation for more information about our forward-looking statements and risks and uncertainties which may affect us. Now I'll turn the call over to you, John.

Thank you, Will. Good morning, everybody. As always, thank you for joining us. In January, we closed the independent financial transaction, a deal that we projected to be 27% accretive to our earnings per share. In the first quarter, the bank's earnings accelerated just as we forecast, but loan growth stalled with all the economic uncertainty. Remember, though, we mentioned in April that our loan pipelines were growing significantly in the spring. As you can see in the deck, the pipeline growth in the first quarter led to a 57% increase in loan production from around $2 billion a quarter to over $3 billion in the second quarter, and that led to solid loan growth. In Texas and Colorado specifically, loan production increased 35% and non-PCD loans grew by about $200 million. The loan momentum in Texas and Colorado occurred in the same quarter that we successfully completed the conversion of the computer systems. I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize and thank our Texas and Colorado team for their great work navigating through the conversion. It was tremendous teamwork all around, including 400 people who left the Southeast for three weeks to serve as ambassadors to help with the transition. And a special thank you to all the operations, IT, risk, finance, and HR teams that numbered over 1,000 people who made this conversion one of the best we've ever done. Now that the independent financial integration is complete, we've had some time to reflect on the progress that we've made. Our goal has always been to build a company in the best geography in the country, with the best scale, and to build the best business model. We believe that those three priorities will ultimately yield the best shareholder value. By adding Texas and Colorado to the franchise, we're now firmly established in the fastest growing markets in the country. And at $66 billion in assets, we've achieved a scale that's enabled us to make the necessary investments in technology and risk management, while simultaneously producing top quartile financial returns. Just look at the second quarter. Adjusted for merger costs, South State's return on assets was 1.45%. And our return on tangible common equity was nearly 20%. And finally, our entrepreneurial business model is producing a superior customer experience and a superior employee experience. Our retail bank ranks in the top quartile of JD Power's Net Promoter Score, and the scores are improving every year. Our commercial and middle market bank collectively ranked in the top 5% for award recognition in 2025 of the 600 banks tracked by Coalition Greenwich. And our level of employee engagement ranks in the top 10% of financial institutions in America, according to this year's employee surveys. So we built a team of professionals that is talented and engaged with a heart for serving each other and serving our clients. And it's a team that's delivering top financial returns for shareholders. We've now put the financial conversion in the rearview mirror. And as we look ahead to the prospects of an improving yield curve, we're in a great position to focus on and accelerate the bank's organic growth. Given the strength of our earnings growth and our capital levels, the board of directors felt comfortable this week to increase our dividend by 11%. Will, I'll turn it back to you to walk through the moving parts on the balance sheet and income statement.

Thank you, John. As always, I'll hit a few highlights focused on operating performance and adjusted metrics, and then we'll move into Q&A. We had another good quarter with PPNR of $314 million and $2.30 in EPS. Net interest income grew by $33 million over Q1, only $2 million of which was due to higher accretion. We continued to perform well in cost of deposits, which came in at $184 million, a five basis point improvement from Q1. Our loan yields of $6.33 improved eight basis points from Q1 and were approximately 22 basis points below our new origination rate for the second quarter. Loan yields in the quarter also benefited from early payoff on acquired loans, including some PCD loans. Excluding $14 million in early payoff accretion, loan yields of $6.20 were one basis point higher than Q1, and loan yields excluding all accretion were up seven basis points from Q1. Additionally, the second quarter had a full quarter's benefit of the Q1 securities portfolio restructuring, driving the yield on securities 51 basis points higher. So to recap, and you can see this in the waterfall slide in the deck, of the 17 basis points improvement in the NIM, approximately five basis points of NIM improvement was due to lower cost of deposits, six basis points was due to loan coupon yields, and seven basis points was due to a full quarter of the securities portfolio restructuring. As always, Steve will give some updated margin guidance in our Q&A. Non-interest income of $87 million was similar to Q1 levels, with improvement in our correspondent business offset by a slight decline in our mortgage revenue. On the expense side, NIE of $351 million was at the low end of our guidance, and our second quarter efficiency ratio of .1% brought the six-month -to-date ratio below 50%. Credit costs remain low with the $7.5 million provision expense essentially matching our six basis points in net charge-offs. We had one additional day one PCD charge-off of $17 million on an acquired independent relationship. This is an as-of acquisition date impairment where there were conditions in existence at the January 1 closing date that we became aware of during the quarter. We continued to have strong loss absorption capacity. Asset quality remains stable and payment performance remains very good. Our capital position improved again with CET1 and TBV per share growing nicely. It's worth noting that tangible book value per share of $51.96 is up .5% from the year-ago level, even with the dilutive impacts of the IBTX merger. Our TCE ratio is also higher than its June 2024 level. Additionally, our strong capital and reserve position and the rate at which we're growing capital continues to provide us with good capital optionality. That includes this quarter's 11% dividend increase and other options including the potential to repurchase shares opportunistically should we choose to do so. Operator will now take questions.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Katherine Mealor with KBW. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. Morning. I thought we could just start on your outlook for the margin. Gosh, it was just really great across the board on securities, loan yield, deposits. We kind of got everything all at once. Curious if you think they're still upward. We're now at the top end of the range that I would have expected. Is there the ability to still expand the margin from here? Just curious for your outlook for the margin in the back half of the year.

Thanks. Sure, Katherine. This is Steve. Like you mentioned, the net interest margin score is very strong at 402. I think we have a slide on page 12 that talks about that. Our guidance this last quarter was between 380 and 390. So significant beat. Approximately half of that beat related to our expectations of loan coupon securities deposit costs as you mentioned is higher than better than we thought. And then half of it related to our expectation of loan accretion, which was a little higher than we thought due to some higher PCD accretion from early payoffs. And you can see that in our PCD balances. Page 13, as Will mentioned in his opening comments, describes the change quarter over quarter. And then, and I think the highlight are all the loan coupon increase, security coupon increase, and the cost of deposit. So that makes up the 17 basis points of the quarter to quarter. As we think about the guidance, to be just simply, there's really no significant change to the guidance as we see it. Sometimes as we look at these quarter to quarters and as it relates to accretion, sometimes it's looking at the portrait versus looking at the movie. And I think the portrait from quarter to quarter can get a little noisy, but the movie is kind of where we're going to continue to guide you towards. And that's over the next 18 to 24 months. But as we think about the assumptions, the main assumptions around that are the size of interest earning assets, the rate forecast, and then lastly, the loan accretion. For us, the interest earning assets, we reiterate our guide from last quarter that we would have average earning assets to be roughly $58 billion for the full year in 2025. And then in the fourth quarter average, we'd exit somewhere in the $59 billion. That's a mid single digit growth rate. And we sort of see that going into 2026. But as John mentioned in his prepared remarks, we'll see how the growth outlook evolves over time. So really no change in guidance to the interest earning assets. On the rate forecast, we don't see rate cuts this year. So we're trying to keep it simple. And then we can talk later about interest sensitivity. And then accretion, loan accretion based on our models, we would expect loan rate accretion to total approximately $200 million, maybe slightly higher than that for 2025, of which we've recognized about 120. We've recognized 125 so far this year. So 200 in total for 2025, but we recognize 125. So that indicates we have, you know, I don't know, between 75, 80, 85 left or so for this year. And then we expect in our models based on prepayments and others, we expect about $150 million in 2026 of accretion. So as a reminder, we have about $393 million left of the discount. So anyway, based on all those assumptions, we'd continue to expect NIM to be between 380 and 390 for the remainder of the year and to drift higher in 2026. As the combination of the legacy South State loan book continues to reprice up. So no change to any of the guidance that we talked about, except that if, obviously, if rates or if our growth rate got higher, then certainly that interest income would move higher.

That makes sense. Okay. And so, and within that, so it seems, I guess within that 75 to 80 million of accretion left in the back half of the year, I guess that's just your base level. So it doesn't seem any accelerated accretion, but we've gotten that the past two quarters. So, you know, we may get back to that's just kind of your base level.

Yeah, our base level, you know, it's hard to tell some of these things like last quarter, there was a fair amount of PCD. You know, if you look at our PCD loans, they were down 225 million. That was higher than we expected, which, you know, it's a good thing. It affects accretion, certainly affects the allowance too. But, you know, ultimately, we would not expect those PCDs. Some of that is just our people resolving some of those, you know, as we get our hands around the IVTX portfolio.

Great. That makes sense. Okay. And maybe one more on the growth outlook. The origination, the slide that you were, you show origination, it seems like you've really got some momentum in the origination volume, which is so great to see. So just curious for your growth out. I mean, I know you said average earning assets are still kind of heading towards 59 billion, but is it fair to assume an improvement in the bottom line organic growth rate in the back half of the year, maybe kind of closer towards that kind of mid to high single digit levels?

Yeah, Kevin, it's John. I think we guided to mid single digits for the remainder of the year, and that's, you know, kind of where we wound up in the second quarter in the mid single digit range. But this kind of played out the way we talked about in April with that pipeline increasing as much as it did. It translated into a really big spike in production, and that led to the loan growth. And I'd say going forward, we're getting more bullish, but we don't know for sure. The pipeline, loan pipeline increased 45% in the first quarter, but then in the second quarter, pipelines increased another 31% on top of what it grew in the first quarter. So that tends to make us feel a little more bullish that mid single digits is probably still appropriate for the next couple quarters. But if the yield curve becomes more favorable, I think it's likely we could move to the mid to upper single digits growth probably next year.

Great. Makes sense. Thanks. Great question. Thank you.

Next question comes from the line of John McDonald with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I just wanted to follow up on Steve's comments there on the NIM and the NII. Inside of that, what surprised you about deposit costs, which were very strong this quarter, and what's your outlook for the deposit costs inside that NIM guidance?

Yeah, that's a good question, John. This is Steve. Just to kind of take you back to the movie versus the portrait or Polaroid, I think if we go back a couple of quarters, if you looked at IBTX and us together, the peak cost of deposits was in the third quarter at 229. And of course, last quarter was 184, so a 45 basis point improvement. So 45% based on 100 basis points. And we only modeled 27% just because we thought it would be a bit different. Having said all that, I think we've optimized the deposit base. And I would kind of look at it that as we continue to grow loans, if we're in a situation where we're in the mid-single digit, maybe even a little higher than that, those deposit costs on an incremental basis will go up a little bit. So our forecast is that those deposit costs will be in the 185, 190 range over the next few quarters, just as we continue to kind of grow on that. But even at that, that would be a 40% beta or something like that, which is better than we thought.

Thanks. And then just on the loan growth, another follow-up. In terms of the pull through of the strong production to net loan growth, what are you seeing on paydowns? Any change in the paydown activity that's affecting the difference between the gross production and what you're seeing in terms of net loan growth?

The paydowns in the first quarter were actually lower than normal. We went back and looked at independent and South State combined for the last four or five quarters, even before we closed. The second quarter paydowns returned to a little more normal. It was a little more elevated than the last five quarter run rate. So I think that the level of paydowns in the second quarter is probably appropriate for where we go from here. A lot of this has to do with not just paydowns, but how much the loan originations fund initially versus over time. And we're funding around about 60% of that production. So there is some additional funding that will occur over time.

Got it. Okay. Great. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Skelton with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Steve, if you could maybe talk a little bit about the interest rate sensitivity as well as you noted. Just kind of want to make sure that the rate is still the way I think about it. And I think you said you see the NIM going higher in 26, assuming that has some cuts baked in and that you guys are still kind of a net beneficiary if we get a little bit of rate cuts on the lower end. But Steve, Mr. The curve.

Sure. No, that's a good question. As it relates to the interest rate sensitivity, I think we talked about it last quarter, but really no change from our guidance as we model it and our team models it. We expect somewhere in the one to two basis point improvement to overall margin for every 25 basis point cut. So I guess if the Fed ends up cutting rates 100 basis points, maybe that's 456 basis points on the run rate when all that's finished. And sort of the math behind that is we have about 30% of our portfolio, loan portfolio is a floating rate portfolio. So that's 14.6 billion. Of course, all that gets cut immediately. We have a little over $14 billion in exception price deposits that we think that over time we get about 80% of the data on that. And then we have the CD book, which is 7.7. We think we get 75% of that. So, you know, that's sort of been our history. We'll have to see. But that's sort of the math behind, you know, behind that one to two basis points. And then, you know, on the loan repricing piece, without any rate cuts, we should continue, as I mentioned in my remarks, that, you know, margin should continue to increase. And really the math behind that is the fixed rate loan repricing of the legacy South State. So, you know, if you think about over the, if you kind of look at the 18 month period from here to the end of 2026, the legacy South State, the unmarked book, has about $6.6 billion of loans repricing that, on average, over that period of 18 months is about five, the coupon's about 5%. And we think, you know, obviously our new loan production this past quarter was $6.54. But, yeah, we're modeling sort of a six and a quarter over that period of time. So, you pick up, you know, percent and a quarter on that. And then, of course, on the independent portfolio, we have about $3 billion over the next 18 months that will mature reprice on the fixed book. And, of course, that discount rate is somewhere in the seven and a quarter range. So, if that's true, that would be negative by about, you know, if we want to use the same number, six and a quarter by 1%. So, the positive would be, you know, $6.6 billion repricing up one and a quarter percent. And the negative would be $3 billion pricing down at 1%. The net of all that is about 50, you know, $50-ish million, about 10 basis points positive on loan yields. So, that's how we're kind of thinking about the moving parts from here. You know, a lot of the sensitivity of the interest rates have already been taken out because the independent marks. What's left is the legacy South State repricing book and then any rate cuts on top of that. So, hopefully, that's helpful if you think about it.

Yeah, no, that's great detail, especially about the puts and takes on legacy South State versus IBTX. Appreciate that. I guess, you know, maybe if we could touch on the deal that was announced last night, maybe not that specifically, but just M&A in your markets even, how do you think about how dislocation could benefit you all? Would you have any governor to adding people and talent if they become available? Just kind of how you think about the dynamics of the market and your ability to take advantage of that moving

forward. Yeah, I mean, I look about where we are. I'm really glad we made our move in Texas when we did in early 2024. That was really before the competition heated up and I think that timing gave us an early mover advantage. You know, for us, we're not pursuing anything now. The way the bank's performing, the bar is high for us and we can afford to be patient and selective on M&A. Plus, we think our multiples cheat. But our top priority now is that we're firing on all cylinders in Texas and Colorado. The conversion went great and the organic pipelines in Texas and Colorado grew by 31% last quarter. That's what we're focused on. And, you know, with all the disruption of M&A in the southeast and Texas, that always creates opportunities and South States positioned in the right spot.

Got it. But nothing that would deter you from adding, you know, if a team of let's just say 10 or 20 people came around, you'd go ahead and do that if

this was right. I mean, yeah, absolutely. We added 47 revenue producers in the second quarter. So that's part of our DNA is constantly recruiting. And, you know, with all the disruption in Texas and southeast, we'll continue to do that.

Perfect. Thanks, Father Peller. Great quarter.

The next question comes from the line of Jared Shaw with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. I guess just looking at, you know, you call it the regulatory sweet spot of 60 to 80 billion. How do you see that trending? You know, you're in there right now. How do you see that trending over time? Do you think, you know, if we see some concrete change in regulation for 100 billion that your platform can naturally grow above that without any more big investments? Or how should we think about that regulatory sweet spot changing over time for you in scale?

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's in the news every day. You've got new regulators in place. They're making changes. But I mean, the way I think about it, we're a long way from 100 billion dollars at 66 billion in size. So we've got a long time to continue building the infrastructure. Our Chief Risk Officer, Beth DeSimone has done a fabulous job managing the heightened expectations over the last four or five years as we cross 50. We've got great relationships with our regulators. We'll just have to watch and see how the regulation evolves. But we've got a long time before we're faced with that.

Okay, thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Rose with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Will there, Steve, just any updates on the expense outlook? Looks like you were at the lower end of the range for this quarter. Maybe just some color on what drove you to the lower end of the range and any updates as we kind of think about what you'd previously said around, you know, the back half of the year just as a starting point. Thanks.

Yeah, Michael. And I guess the short answer is really no change to our prior guidance. I mean, honestly, looking at consensus, you guys have, we think, a good number in there for the remainder of this year and 2026. So I'd say really no change to our guidance. There are always some moving pieces, as you well know, relative to revenue-based compensation, some of the business lines. You know, you've got loan radiation bonds that impact your deferred loan costs, all those things that move in and out. You've got incentive comp, all that sort of stuff. But, you know, so any variability between what I, last time I think I said between 350 and 360 this quarter. So we were, you know, at the low end of that range. But all those kinds of things can factor in. You know, we've done a good job in executing on the cost save. So we still feel very good about that part of the integration with independent and really sticking with our guidance on NIE.

Perfect.

And then maybe just... One comment I forgot to mention. You know, just a reminder, I've said it before, but July 1 is when much of our team across the company gets their merit increases. So that's also factored into my guidance as well, that the third quarter will be, will reflect that too.

Perfect. Appreciate it. And maybe just as my follow-up, you know, I know it's still early days, but anything on the revenue synergy front that we should be contemplating now that we're another 90 days past the deal? And then just from a retention standpoint, how is that held up relative to kind of your original expectations? Thanks.

Yeah, it's held up great. As I mentioned previously on these calls, we went to all the signed up with employment agreements before the announcement, and then we went to the... It was the top 47 revenue producers with retention kind of packages, and all of them joined up and did that. So we've been very, very pleased. And the leader we've got in Texas and Colorado, Dan Strodal, highly respected in the bank with that team, and he's done a great job, the bankers are doing a good job. And we're hiring. I think in... I mentioned those revenue producers we've added, we added two in Houston, we added two in Colorado, we added one in Dallas, so they're out recruiting.

And then just on the fee side, the synergy side, anything that should be

one thing that's been a real positive, you know, independent was a really good CRE lender, and we've got the interest rate swap product, Michael, the capital markets product where we make a fees, and they've been quick adopters to that. So that's been a nice source of fee revenue.

All right, I'll step back. Thanks for taking my questions.

Your next question comes from the line of Gary Tenner with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to just ask a question about kind of the deposit rates. I know you gave kind of a 185 to 190 range for the back half of the year, but on the CD side, I guess I'm curious, A, you know, the amount of growth there this quarter was pretty notable, just from a, you know, sequential quarter comparison. So wondering about kind of the push there. And then the rate pay didn't come down maybe quite as much as I would have assumed. So I'm just wondering kind of how that market is shaping up from a pricing perspective.

Yeah, that's good. This is Steve. You know, when we closed, and you didn't have the benefit of seeing this, but when we closed the independent transaction, if you looked at our 1231 numbers, I think our CD balances would have been a little over seven and a half billion or so. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, we're trying to balance sheet manage this, of course, there's a lot of moving parts and putting it together. And so in the first quarter, even though I think we grew, it grew deposits a little bit, our CD is actually shrunk, although that was the first time we reported together. So you didn't see that. What, you know, what is happening now, it's just the growth rate, you know, phenomenon. And in the first quarter, we did and we think we will. And so, you know, it's going to be on the incremental, you know, new deposit side, it's just going to be at a higher funded rate until they cut rates. And so that's all I would say about that. I think, you know, if our balance sheet was flat, we would probably stay here. But on the incremental growth, as we record six and a half percent loans, and we're going to have to fund those incremental loans or with incremental deposits, and those rates will be a little bit higher on the incremental margin.

Okay, I appreciate it. And then follow question just on the loan yields, you know, the seven basis points expansion kind of execution. I know, I think, well, you've kind of offered some reasons why that moves around. But was the normalization of prepay is this quarter, a notable driver of that expansion? Or is it more mix and production yields?

Yes, this is Steve, I guess, if you take all accretion out, and we show this on the waterfall, our, you know, loan yield went from 571 last quarter to 578. So, or five, seven, yes, something like that, seven basis points or so on the loan yield. And so there's a repricing component to that. But obviously, as we mentioned on the accretion, and a lot, you know, some of that was the PCD accretion, it was higher than we thought. And that's because I think we worked some of those relationships out or did. So, you know, anytime you accelerate some of that back to the individual quarters, there's going to be some noise in that. But if I had to kind of, you know, kind of bring you back to what we said last quarter and thinking about total loan yield, we sort of said, you know, it should range this year in the 6-15 to 6-1 quarter range. And then if you kind of think about the comments I just made in a flat rate environment and the repricing of our loans from legacy South State as well as legacy independent, you know, you would see another, you know, 10 basis points higher over, you know, now almost kind of in the 10 basis points a year range. So I know one of the research analysts put out a report a few weeks ago just trying to, you know, show the total loan yield, which is kind of how we think about it. You know, in a flat rate environment, you know, our total loan yield in the next, you know, two years would be, you know, call it 20 basis points higher than it is, you know, today. But I doubt we'll be in flat rate environment and I doubt everything will be similar. But that's kind of how we're thinking about loan yield this year. 6-15 to 6-1 quarter, you know, we've a little overperformed a little bit and because of some of the PCD and other things. But long term, it continues to march higher in a flat environment.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Samuel Varga with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. I just wanted to ask a question on the allowance. Will you give some great color last quarter and, you know, not shifting the scenario weightings, but having a refactor adjustment in there for tariffs. Can you touch on where that adjustment is today and sort of how you're trying to bake that in moving forward and where the allowance might go as a result?

Sure, sure, Sam. Good question. You know, I'd say this about the reserve level. A couple things. One, if you, you know, if you look at slide 21 of the deck, you can see obviously our charge off history is, you know, very low. You know, 51 basis points came into the over 10 years plus a quarter. At some point, you know, that data seeps its way into the regression analysis that drives, you know, loss estimates and reserve balances. You know, we've been through a pretty, you know, uncertain period in the economy these first couple of quarters, obviously with with the tariff uncertainty, et cetera, et cetera, which has driven some of those Q factor items that we mentioned last quarter. Those continue this quarter. We did actually adjust our scenario weighting this quarter a little bit more pessimistically than it was in the first quarter. But I'd say, you know, stepping back, if you look, look at the reserve level, you know, if we see stability in the economy and the economic forecast, I think it is reasonable to say that we could see reserve levels decline as a percentage of loans. You know, if you look back when we adopted CSUN, of course, the company was smaller then, but the reserve was down to 115, 120 basis point range. Other thing to keep in mind, too, you know, Steve referenced that the PCD loans declined at a more rapid rate in the second quarter. That's really like a 25% annualized decline rate. You know, PCD loans, not only are they marked at a little bit higher interest rate, but they carry a higher reserve. So reduction in PCD loans is also going to put downward pressure on reserve levels. So, you know, all that being said, it's always difficult to predict, but I think it's reasonable to expect that over time with a stable economy, you see our reserve levels probably move down.

Great. Thanks for that. And then, John, could you just touch on capital allocation from here? The buyback word came up. Just curious on how you think about it over the next 18 months.

Yeah, with the earnings improving the way they have, you saw our PP&R per share increasing substantially in the last year. The board felt comfortable to move the dividend rate up. We moved the rate up 11%. And we think we're in a position to annually, consistently see that dividend rate increase. So that's naturally a priority. We do believe there's opportunities on the buyback. I mentioned that I feel like our currency is cheap right now, so there could be some opportunities there. And then we're watching these loan pipelines continue to grow and opportunities to recruit. So that would be the other main priority as well as organic growth.

Yeah, I'll just layer in, Sam, a couple comments. One, I think I previously said that we saw our CET1 growing, you know, 20, 25 basis points a quarter. Yeah, so if we do some buyback, maybe that number drops down to the, you know, 10, 15, 15 to 20 range. You know, we in the first quarter did, you know, some capital actions with respect to the sale lease back and then restructuring the bond portfolio, which as we saw with the impact of that on the margin. But if you look at our CET1 today with AOCI included in the calculation, we're actually above the level we were a year ago. We were at 10, you know, almost 10 and a half at the end of the second quarter on CET1 with AOCI. So a good opportunity to think about different options.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

I will now turn the call back over to John Corbett for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

All right. Well, thank you guys for spending some time with us this morning. As always, if you have any follow up questions, feel free to give Will and Steve a ring and I hope you have great weekend.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining and you may now disconnect.