United Community Banks, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to United Community Bank's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Hosting the call today are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lynn Harton, Chief Financial Officer Jefferson Harralson, Chief Banking Officer Rich Bradshaw, and Chief Risk Officer Rob Edwards. Thank you for joining us. Both are included on the website at UCBI.com. Copies of the second quarter's earnings release and investor presentation were filed this morning on Form 8K with the SEC. And a replay of this call will be available in the investor relations section of the company's website at UCBI.com. Please be aware that during this call, forward-looking statements may be made by representatives of United. Any forward-looking statements should be considered in light of risks and uncertainties described on page 5 and 6 of the company's 2025 Form 10-K, as well as other information provided by the company in its filings with the SEC and included on its website. At this time, I will turn the call over to Lynn Harton.

Good morning and thank you for joining our call today. This was a great quarter with solid results and progress on our strategic goals. We had a large non-operating item from the Navitas Reserve release this quarter, which Jefferson will cover in more detail later. For now, leaving that aside, I will focus on our operating results. On that basis, EPS of 71 cents per share was up 8% over last year. Total revenue was up 7% over last year. Our net interest margins reached 3.68%, up 18 basis points over last year, and up 3 basis points from last quarter. Credit results were solid, with bank-only net charge-offs of 9 basis points and total net charge-offs of only 16 basis points. Past dues were very low at only 11 basis points, and special mention and substandard accruing loans were at the lowest level in several quarters at only 2.5%. Loan growth reached 6.8% annualized for the quarter. More importantly, organic loan growth, excluding Navitas, was the strongest it has been in some time, reaching 6.4% annualized for the quarter. For comparison, it was 4.3% for the year of 2025 and 3.9% annualized for the first quarter of this year. This is due to our investment in hiring new producers. When we decided early last year that it was time to sell Novitus and refocus on our core franchise, we spent time developing a playbook and strategy to put the same effort and attention we have paid to integrating merged teammates into hiring new revenue producers. We began executing that plan in the third quarter of last year and have seen net expansion of 17% in producers since that time. We're pleased with this execution and look forward to continuing strong growth as a result. Our operating return on assets was 122 basis points and our operating return on tangible common equity was 13%, both essentially equal to last quarter, even with elevated hiring costs and a notable one-time expense item. We continue to be excited about bringing Peach State into the United Family. When we put the two teams together, we will have the best bankers and the top deposit market share in one of the fastest growing counties in the southeast. Everything is on track for a close early in the third quarter as planned. Capital levels remain high, and even though we had extended blackout periods resulting from the Navitas and Peach State announcements, we continue to have repurchase authorization remaining that is sufficient to retire the shares to be issued for the acquisition of Peach State, which is our intention. I'll now turn it to Jefferson to cover our second quarter performance in more detail. Thank you, Lynn, and good morning to everyone.

I will start on page four and talk about some of the details of the quarter. We recorded gap results of $0.95 per share that benefited from a large non-operating item. Specifically, we released our Navitas Loan Loss Reserve as we reclassified those loans to help for sale. This added 25 cents to our GAAP earnings in the quarter. On page four, we also highlight a $4.5 million notable operating expense that we do not expect to recur. In the second quarter, we settled with the state of California to obtain a lender's license for Navitas. Navitas had previously held a California license but let it expire after we bought them in 2018 because we believed it was no longer required to have one under United Ownership as a bank subsidiary. That said, we settled with the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, the DFPI, and the $4.5 million represents our cost. About 75% of the $4.5 million notable item was not tax deductible. Including the associated legal fees and adjusting for the tax impact We estimate that notable items negatively impacted Q2 by three and a half cents. I will move on to page six to talk about the deposit results. On an end of period basis, our customer deposits declined by $295 million, with two thirds of the decline coming from expected seasonal public funds outflows. On an average basis, excluding public funds, our customer deposits grew 169 million dollars or 3.3 percent annualized. We were also very pleased that our cost of deposits remained relatively flat improving by one basis point in the second quarter. On page seven we turn to the loan portfolio where our loan growth accelerated to a 6.8 percent annualized pace. Excluding Navitas we grew at a 6.4 percent annualized pace. Similar to past quarters We saw strong growth in the HELOC and CNI categories, which continue to be our focus for growth. We have included a new section at the bottom of the page showing what our new loan mix is ex-Navitus, which is still diversified and CNI heavy. Turning to page 8, where we highlight some of the strengths of our balance sheet, we believe that our balance sheet is in good position from a liquidity and capital standpoint to be ready for any economic volatility. We show that our loan-to-deposit ratio, excluding the VITAS, came in at 76%, up from 74%. Our CET1 ratio was relatively flat at 13.5%, and remains a source of strength for the bank. On page 9, we look at capital in more detail. As I mentioned, our CET1 ratio was 13.5%, and our TCE was also flat at just under 10%. Moving on to spread income on page 10, spread income grew 14% annualized due to the combination of 6.8% loan growth, 6% average earning asset growth, and the benefit of the extra day. Spread income grew 7% on a year-over-year basis. Our net interest margin increased three basis points to 3.68% compared to last quarter and was up 18 basis points and the second quarter is the sixth quarter in a row of margin expansion. Moving to page 11, non-interest income was $38.4 million in the quarter, which was relatively flat as compared to last quarter when Q1 is adjusted for the $5.2 million gain on an interest rate cap that we sold last quarter. Our operating expenses were $159.9 million in the second quarter. Excluding the California lender license issue that I described earlier, non-interest expenses grew by $2.9 million as compared to the first quarter, of which our annual merit increase contributed $1.8 million. The cost of new revenue producer hiring comprised the remaining $1 million of expense growth. Excluding the license issue, our efficiency ratio improved slightly to around 55%. We added a new page on page 13 where we talk about our significant hiring since September 30th of 2025. Since then, we have added 37 net new producers, of which about half are commercial lenders. This increases our overall sales force by about 17%. We are encouraged that we are starting to see the balance sheet growth from this initiative, and this was a factor in our increased loan growth this quarter. Moving to credit quality on page 14, net charge-offs were only 16 basis points in the quarter and only 9 basis points on a bank-only basis. Credit was stable with essentially flat MPAs and nice improvements in past dues, special mention, and substandard accruing loans. On page 15, we show the allowance for credit losses, our $29.8 million net reserve release included a $38.5 million Navitas reserve release as we reclassified those loans to help or sale as a result of the pending sale of Navitas. On a bank-only basis, we had an $8.7 million provision, which more than covered our $4.2 million in bank net charge-offs. With the Navitas release, our allowance for credit losses moved down to 1.04% of loans. This decrease reflects the lower potential loss content and variability of losses with the sale of the Navitas portfolio. With that, I'll pass it back to Len.