SmartFinancial, Inc.

Hello everyone and thank you for joining the Smart Financial first quarter 2026 earning release and conference call. My name is Claire 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. I will now hand over to Nate Stroll, Director of Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Claire, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Smart Financial's first quarter 2026 earnings call. During today's call, we will reference the slides and press release that are available in the 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 our call. Our comments include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and 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 filing, 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 April 20th, 2026 with the SEC. And now I'll turn it over to Billy Carroll to open our call.

Thanks, Nate, and good morning, everyone. Great to be with you, and thank you for joining us today and for your interest in SMBK. As usual, I'll open up our call with some commentary and hand it over to Ron to walk through some numbers in greater detail. After our prepared comments, we'll open it up with Ron, Nate, Rhett, Miller, and myself available for Q&A. It was a great start to the year for our company with another very busy quarter as we continue to execute on our strategy of leveraging the great foundation we've built over the last several years. Our team's focus on this execution continues to be outstanding, and this first quarter of 2026 was yet another example of that. So let me jump right into some of our highlights. 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 $27.33 per share, up from $26.86 at year end. For the quarter, we posted operating earnings of $13.7 million, or $0.81 per diluted share, with total operating revenue coming in at $53.8 million, higher than the $53.3 million in the prior quarter, even with two fewer days. We continue to execute on outstanding growth on both sides of the balance sheet, posting 14% annualized growth in loans and 7% annualized growth in core deposits. Our history of strong credit continues with only 25 basis points in non-performing assets. I'm very pleased with our credit performance and our extremely low level of NPAs. And operating non-interest expenses also came in on target at $32.9 million as we continue to exhibit expense discipline. Looking at the first few pages in the 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 tangible book value. All of those charts are great graphics to illustrate our execution. I'm looking forward to and expecting these trends to continue. So a couple of additional high-level comments for me on growth. Our balance sheet expansion is a direct result of the focus of our sales teams. Our continued evolution as an outstanding organic growth company is one of the things I've been most proud of, and I believe something that sets us apart from many other banks. We have hired well, and we have built an outstanding process on prospecting and bringing in new client relationships. 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 14% annualized quarter over quarter, as sales momentum stays strong and balanced across all of our regions. Our average portfolio yield, including fees and accretion, held up well at 6.02%. Regarding deposits, again, core deposits were up 7% annualized when excluding brokered CD payoffs, plus we absorbed a large seasonal withdrawal early in the year. So all in all, a very nice deposit quarter. 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. A couple of other highlights noted in our release bullets included an allowance for credit loss model change that bumped their provisioning during the quarter. So we accomplished these results while adding an outsized provision adjustment with the new ACL model that better suits our company. Ron's going to discuss this a little bit more in a moment. We also had a senior team addition with a new director of private banking and wealth management from an in-market regional bank that I believe is going to elevate the work that we're doing in this area even further. We don't talk a lot about our wealth and investments platform, but this business line has steadily grown over the last several years as we've added some outstanding private bankers and new financial advisors. This focus on assisting high net worth clientele is becoming a great business driver for us. And with our strategy, we can go toe to toe with any regional or national player. So all in all, a very nice way to start 2026. I'm going to stop there, hand it over to Ron, and let him dive into some details. Ron?