SouthState Bank Corporation

Good morning and welcome to South State Bank Corporation's Q4 2025 earnings conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, we'll conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question at this time, you'll need to press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Will Matthews. Will Matthews, thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Will Matthews, and welcome to South State's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. I'm here with John Corbett, Steve Young, and Jeremy Lucas. We'll make some brief prepared remarks and then move into Q&A. I'll also refer you to the earnings release 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 risk and uncertainties which may affect us. Now I'll turn the call over to you, John.

Thank you, Will. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. As we wrap up the year, I'm really proud of what the South State team accomplished in 2025. Two years ago, we were deep into the due diligence phase of the independent financial deal. And it was a big transformational move for us to do a deal that size and expand westward into new markets in Texas and Colorado. Now, over a several-year period, I developed a friendship with David Brooks, independent CEO, It felt good about the chemistry between our companies, but in a deal that size, there's always a gut check moment when you weigh all the potential risks, all the things that can potentially go wrong and compare that with the rewards of moving forward. Now, ultimately we did move forward and announced the deal in May of 2024. And during this past year of 2025, the South State team successfully navigated through that initial period of high risks. the regulatory approvals and the systems conversions. And now we're on the other side, enjoying the rewards of a well-choreographed integration. And in that regard, a special recognition and thanks goes to Mark Thompson. Mark's been working with us for over 20 years and will be retiring soon. But his last assignment was to move to Dallas with his wife and help us build personal friendships with our new partners in Texas and Colorado. And Mark did a great job leading the integration And we're going to miss his leadership when he hangs up his jersey later this year. In addition to the social success, the deal paid off financially. Excluding merger costs, earnings per share in 2025 are up over 30%. And it's not just EPS growth. We also experienced double-digit growth in tangible book value per share. And that's including the day one dilution from the deal, raising the dividend by 11% and share repurchases. So double digit growth in both earnings per share and double digit growth in tangible book value per share in 2025. And even though organic growth started slow at the beginning of the year, pipelines were building throughout the year and many of those deals hit the books in the fourth quarter. We ended with 8% loan growth and 8% deposit growth during the quarter. Now, as investors, you know that it's typical for bank valuations to lag in the first year of an integration. But with our confidence in how well things were going, we decided to be opportunistic and get more aggressive with our share repurchase plan. We purchased 2 million shares of SouthState stock, or roughly 2% of the company, in the fourth quarter. And our board authorized a new share repurchase plan adding an additional 5 million shares to the 560,000 shares remaining in the old plan. We didn't want to miss the opportunity to retire shares when there was such a disconnect between the fundamental performance of the bank and the valuation. When you take a step back, things are playing out right in line with our strategic plan. Our goal for 2025 was to have a clean conversion, achieve our cost-save mandate, and get the organization growing at historical levels by the fourth quarter. And the team accomplished those goals. The integration's now in the rear view mirror, the risk profile of the company is reduced, the fundamentals of the company are as good as they've ever been, and we're carrying that momentum into 2026. Will, I'll turn it back to you to walk through the moving parts on the balance sheet and the income statement.