SouthState Bank Corporation

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 South State Bank Corporation Q3 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on 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 1 again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Will and Matthews. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to South State's third quarter 2025 earnings call. This is Will Matthews, and I'm here with John Corbett, Steve Young, and Jeremy Lucas. As always, we'll make a few brief prepared remarks and then move into questions. 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 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 that may affect us. Now I'll turn the call over to you, John.

Thank you, Will. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. We're pleased to report a strong third quarter for South State. Earnings per share are up 30% in the last year, and the company generated a return on tangible equity of 20%. If you recall, we closed on the independent financial transaction in January. We converted the computer systems in May, and now we're beginning to realize the full earnings power of the combined company. Loan production was up a little in the third quarter to nearly $3.4 billion, and we saw moderate growth in both loans and deposits. Payoffs were about $100 million higher in the quarter. Loan production in Texas and Colorado is up 67% since the first quarter of the year, and loan pipelines across the company continue to grow, and we feel like net loan growth will accelerate over the next few quarters. Our charge-offs were 27 basis points for the quarter, primarily due to one larger C&I credit acquired with Atlantic Capital that has been in the bank a number of years. Stepping back, however, the credit metrics in the bank are stable. Payment performance is good. Non-accruals are down slightly. And we've only experienced 12 basis points of charge-offs year-to-date. Our credit team is forecasting that we're going to land in the neighborhood of 10 basis points of charge-offs for the year. We're currently in the middle of strategic planning this time of year and thinking about the banking landscape, deregulation, and the opportunities in front of us. Over the last 15 years, we've built a company in the best markets with good scale and an entrepreneurial business model. And we've done the heavy lifting to build out the infrastructure of the bank. We're now in a perfect position to capitalize on the disruption occurring in our markets. We've calculated that there are about $90 billion of overlapping deposits with South State that are in the midst of consolidation in the Southeast, Texas, and Colorado. Our regional presidents understand the opportunity and they're laser focused on recruiting great bankers and organically growing the bank in 2026. Will, I'll turn it back to you to provide additional color on the numbers.