SouthState Bank Corporation

Good morning, my name is Audra and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the South State Bank Corporation first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. 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 the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to William Matthews, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to South State's first quarter 2026 earnings call. This is Will Matthews, and I'm here with John Corbett, Steve Young, and Jeremy Lucas. We'll follow our pattern of brief remarks followed by a 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 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. Thanks for joining us. For the quarter, South State delivered a return on assets of 1.37% and a return on tangible common equity of 17.6%. As we progress through 2026, our four main priorities are, first, to expand our commercial banking sales force. Second, to deliver meaningful organic growth. Third, to systematically retire shares at an attractive valuation. And fourth, to learn how to leverage the benefits of artificial intelligence and implement it throughout the company. We're making good progress on all four fronts. As far as recruiting, we're now in a yield curve environment that is more favorable to balance sheet growth. And with the consolidation disruption occurring throughout our markets, we see an opportunity to expand our commercial banking team by 10 to 15% in the next couple of years. In the last six months alone, our division presidents were successful in attracting and growing our commercial banking team by about 7%. We're going to continue to be opportunistic, but based upon the rapid success, we may slow the pace of hiring in the next few months. Second, for organic loan growth, loan pipelines have grown 50% since last summer, and that's resulted in solid annualized loan growth of 8% in the fourth quarter, and then another 7.5% loan growth in the first quarter. Pipelines grew significantly again in the first quarter, which gives us confidence moving forward. Our previous loan growth guidance for 2026 called for mid to upper single digit growth this year. There's a decent chance that we could end up on the higher end of our guidance. The biggest highlight by far has been the success in Texas and Colorado. On a year over year comparison, loan production in those two states have more than doubled from $500 million in the first quarter of 25 to $1.1 billion in the first quarter of 26. And Houston specifically experienced the highest loan growth of any market in the entire company this quarter. Third, on stock buybacks, we've repurchased nearly 4% of our shares outstanding since the beginning of the third quarter at an average price of $95.28. We continue to see this as an attractive use of excess capital at a time when bank valuations seem, at least to us, disconnected from fundamental performance and intrinsic value. And then fourth, we're enthusiastically embracing the potential for artificial intelligence. We're deploying more and more co-pilot licenses and training our bankers at the individual user level. We're researching and beginning to deploy AI tools from our major software providers at the department level. And we're looking for ways to re-engineer processes between departments at the enterprise level. More to come, but we're pleased with the way the entire organization is embracing these new tools with the goal of improving our speed and scalability. Speed for improved customer service, and then scalability for efficiency and shareholder returns. Before I turn it over to Will, I'll point out that we've refreshed some of the slides in our deck to highlight the value proposition of being a South States shareholder. Our story hasn't changed, and it isn't complicated. We're building a premier deposit franchise, and we're doing it in the fastest growing markets in the United States. We adhere to a geographic and local market leadership business model. It's a model that empowers our division presidents to tailor their team, products, and pricing to deliver remarkable service to their unique local community. And at the same time, an incentive system built on geographic profitability that instills a CEO and shareholder mindset. This is a model that produces durable results that have outperformed our peers on deposit cost, asset quality, and overall returns. And the outperformance is consistent and durable. Over the last year, over the last five years and over the last 20 years, ultimately leading to a top quartile shareholder return over multiple cycles. Will, I'll turn it back over to you to walk through the details on the quarter.