SmartFinancial, Inc.

Hello everyone and thank you for joining the Smart Financial fourth quarter 2025 earnings release and conference call. My name is Claire and I will 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. I will now hand over to Nate Straw, Director of Strategy and Corporate Development of Smart Financial to begin. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Claire. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Smart Financial's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. During today's call, we will reference the slides and press release that are available in our investor relations section on our website, smartbank.com. Billy Carroll, our president and chief executive officer, will begin our call, followed by Ron Grzynski, our chief financial officer, who will provide some additional commentary. We will be available to answer your questions at the end of the call. Our comments include forward-looking statements These statements are subject to risks and uncertainty, and the actual results could vary materially. We list the factors that might cause these results to differ materially in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements because of new information, early developments, or otherwise, except as may be required by law. During the call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures related to the company's performance. You may see the reconciliation of these measures in the appendices of the earnings release and investor presentation filed on January 20th, 2026 with the SEC. And now, I'll turn it over to Billy Carroll to open our call. Billy?

Thanks, Nate, and good morning, everyone. Great to be with you, and thank you for joining us today and for your interest in SMBK. I'll open our call today with some commentary, then hand it over to Ron to walk through the numbers in some greater detail. After our prepared comments, we'll open it up with Ron, Nate, Rhett, Miller, and myself available for Q&A. It's been another very busy quarter for us as we continue to execute on our strategy of leveraging the great foundation we've built at Smart Financial. Our team's focus on execution has been outstanding as we wrap the best year in our company's history. The fourth quarter was yet another example of that, so let's jump right in and discuss some of the highlights. First, and in my opinion, one of the most important metrics, we continue to increase the tangible book value of our company, which is now up to $26.85 per share. That's growth of over 13% annualized quarter over quarter and 17% for the year. For the quarter, we posted operating earnings of $13.7 million or $0.81 per diluted share. This is our seventh consecutive quarter of positive operating leverage, and for the year, we had record earnings of over $51 million. We again had outstanding growth on both sides of the balance sheet, posting 13% annualized growth in loans and 8% annualized growth in deposits. Our history of strong credit continues with only 22 basis points and non-performing assets. You'll see we added a little more in the allowance to cover our strong loan growth and to address a small handful of equipment loans, but I'm pleased to see these non-performing numbers continue at exceptionally low levels. On the revenue side for the quarter, total operating revenue came in at $53.3 million, but I also want to draw your attention to our pre-provision net revenue number, PPNR, has grown from $14.5 million in the fourth quarter of 24 to a record $20.9 million in the final quarter of 25. That's a 44% increase year over year. Our revenue expansion has been outstanding. And operating non-interest expenses also came in on target and flat to Q3 at $32.5 million, another great example of our expense discipline. Looking at the first few pages in our deck, you'll see our continuation of some very nice trends. We're building our return metrics and most importantly, growing total revenue, EPS, and as I mentioned earlier, tangible book value. All of those charts are great graphics to illustrate our execution, and I'm looking forward to and expecting these trends to continue. So just a couple of additional high-level comments from me on growth. Our balance sheet expansion is a direct result of the focus of our sales team. Our continued evolution of an outstanding organic growth company is one of the things I've been most proud of over the last several years. As we've hired well, we've also built an outstanding foundational process that includes aggressively going after new client relationships, growing existing ones, along with a diligent prospecting process. I would argue that we are in a small, top-of-class group when it comes to pure organic growth. As I stated, we grew our loan book 13% annualized quarter over quarter as sales momentum stayed strong and balanced across all of our regions. Our average portfolio yield, including fees and accretion, held up well at 6.08%. And our new loan production continues to come onto the books accretive to our total portfolio yields. Regarding deposits, again, deposits were up 8% annualized, and that's inclusive of reducing some of our brokered CD positions. It's important to recognize how we're building this bank with core relationships as we have intense focus on both sides of the balance sheet. Looking at the full year for 2025, we grew net loan balances $457 million or 12% and grew core deposit balances $626 million or 14% excluding that brokered CD activity. Just a phenomenal year from our sales and support teams. Our pipelines continue to feel very good as we start 2025, and I will discuss this a little bit more in my closing comments. But we also had some very nice highlight bullets that I want to focus on on our earnings release this quarter, all tied to building the foundation of a bank that is on track to becoming one of the southeast's strongest regional community banks. One key highlight, in addition to the numbers, is our announcement of our planned expansion into the Columbus, Georgia market. Columbus is a natural move for us as we've been doing business in that market over the last few years out of our Auburn office. The timing was excellent to open an office in the second largest city in the state of Georgia, given the opportunity to bring on some outstanding Columbus bankers and the current market disruption. Over the last couple of weeks, we've started the process to expand this region of our footprint. Our style of banking is going to play exceptionally well in Columbus, and we look forward to getting ramped up in 2026. So all in all, a very nice fourth quarter and a very nice way to wrap 2025. And I'm going to stop there and hand it over to Ron to dive into some of the details. Ron?