Home BancShares Inc (HOMB) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Home BancShares Incorporated fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. The purpose of this call is to discuss the information and data provided in the quarterly earnings release issued after the market closed yesterday. Company presenters will begin with prepared remarks, then entertain questions. (Operator Instructions)

The company has asked me to remind everyone to refer to their cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements. You will find this note on Page 3 of their Form 10-K filed with the SEC in February 2025. (Operator Instructions) This conference call is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)

It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Donna Townsell, Director of Investor Relations.

Good afternoon, and welcome to our fourth quarter conference call. With me for today's discussion is our Chairman, John Allison; Stephen Tipton, Chief Executive Officer of Centennial Bank; Kevin Hester, President and Chief Lending Officer; Brian Davis, our Chief Financial Officer; Chris Poulton, President of CCFG; and Scott Walter of Shore Premier Finance. The fourth quarter capped off a bell ringer of the year for Home, and our team is excited today to share some of those details with you.

Our opening remarks today will be from our Chairman, John Allison.

Thanks, and thank you all for joining Home BancShares fourth quarter earnings report and our 2025 year-end conference call. I want to thank all of our team members for leading Home to one of the most successful years in our 26-year history. The numbers really speak for themselves. They are the best numbers we've ever produced. Thank you for all you do and continuing to make Home one of the top-performing banks in America. If we're not the best, we're certainly one of the most consistently profitable performers year in and year out. We're certainly a contender.

For the full year of 2025, the company earned a little over $475 million in net profit. That's an 18.2% increase over '24. And we ran a 2.05% ROA and a 41.29% efficiency ratio with record revenue of $1.9 billion. We had earnings of $2.41 EPS. That's a 20% increase over 2024. We purchased for the year 2,890,706 shares for $81.3 million. And so far this year, we bought back about 96,000.

For the fourth quarter of '25, we reported $118 million in profit. That's an 18% increase over 2024. It was about $100 million, as I recall. PPNR was $167,723,000, good numbers and a 2.06% ROA. And for the first time in a while, an efficiency ratio of sub-40% at 39.5%. Net interest margin of 4.61%, and we built reserves to about 1.90. Revenue was $282.1 million and ROTCE of 16.65%. We repurchased 540,706 shares for $14.7 million for the fourth quarter.

As I said, the numbers speak for themselves. We're excited about our announced LOI with Mountain Commerce and our entry into the great state of Tennessee. Having been a Founder, I know what it takes to build a good financial institution with all the ups and downs, and I look forward to working with Mountain Commerce's founder, Bill Edwards, and his outstanding team. I walked in the same shoes as Bill in building our company. Our transaction is triple accretive, and both sets of shareholders will be accreting the benefits of the merger on day one, not some BS earn back, but from day one.

I just want to talk a little bit about the past and what's happened to bank values and bank stocks. In 1998, we sold our bank for 22.5 times projected earnings and 4.11 times book. It was a really good bank, doing an ROA of 150 plus, but not as strong as Home runs today, but really a good bank.

What's happened to the value of bank stocks? I understand that was the days of pooling and now we're on tangible book, but it trades at about 10 times earnings. Where did the money go? Bank stocks have been about cut in half. We have allowed people to self-inflict the damage to ourselves and our industry, not just once, but over and over again by dilution, dilution, dilution. We have already run nearly all of the generalists completely out of the bank space.

Don and I were recently at a major bank conference and a young sharp female analyst from a well-known national company said, I can't get a single PM portfolio managers is what she was referring to of my company to even look at a bank. She said, including your bank, Johnny, as good as you are, they say no banks period.

So what has created that? What has led to the fact that generalists want nothing to do with the bank space. I think it's an attitude. I think it's because banks have done bad deals that management and Boards of Directors allow, both in the purchase of long-term low-rate securities that cost shareholders hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, plus in management teams paying too much on acquisitions and diluting their shareholders into oblivion. We are forcing the good long-term investors completely out of the space. We were told that a three or four-year earn back to tangible book was acceptable to the investors. That could not be farther from the truth.

It should never have been done and it should never be done again. When does the poor shareholder ever get back to at least even? Add that to poor operating performances of many of the companies, coupled with a three to four-year dilutive deals and hedge funds that will trade you over two bits. We have inflicted the pain into the entire industry.

Look at what bank stocks have done over the past decade. Some dividends are the same and some are at the same price that they were 10 years ago. That's pretty sad. Look at bank stocks when you look at one, if you think about selling, look at the bank stocks and see what their history is for the last 5 or 10 years. I know you don't want to hear the facts, but it is what it is. All while the larger banks are performing much better than the small caps and mid-cap banks.

Banks wanting to grow through acquisitions whose bank stock multiple trades below the multiple they are paying for the bank, they are acquiring are almost always setting themselves up for dilution. Instead of buying, they need to improve their performance and buy back their own stock. Why would you a bank trading at 1.3 a book, pay 2 times book. Again, they would be better in most instances to buy back their own stock and improve their performance rather than diluting themselves with a deal that obviously does not work from the start.

The math is not complicated. They either work or they don't work and most don't. Home has never intentionally done a dilutive deal. Our Happy Bank transaction did not perform as well early as we expected, but it was certainly not because the math in the deal did not work. It was circumstances beyond our control. But it's much better today and the bad is mostly behind us.

The industry's poor performance opened the door to invite HoldCo into our world. If you think that's a bad deal, we have no one to blame except ourselves. It is a good wake-up call for every one of us to recognize the insanity of what we are doing to our shareholders, our industry and our future. The shareholder is who we work for. They are our owners. I've watched banks dilute them into infinity because they did not know what they were doing.

They will never give you an earn-back report. When's the last time someone sent you an earn-back report on the M&A deals over the years? They don't because they can't, simply because they don't work as intended. The CEO gets a bigger salary because he now runs a much bigger bank. So his salary goes up and the shareholder gets screwed one more time.

I've labeled this shareholder abuse. We have to clean up our act or we will continue to lose the investment community, and they will leave the bank space. It took us a while to screw it up, and it will take a while to turn it back around. But we need to start today and save our future and realize who our bosses are and who we work for. No more dilution from this point.

I know I've made a lot of poor performers unhappy and a lot of serial diluters very unhappy by telling the truth. But remember, it's not your money or you would not dilute your shareholder because you'd be diluting yourself. That's why I like founders and owner operators. They are the best partners in the bank space. The CEO of the bank should only make more money when he's responsible for increasing the EPS of the bank and make the shareholders a higher solid EPS increase.

Including dividends, Home is up 68% over the last five years, maybe not the best, but certainly a contender. It appears the stars are lining up in this Trump-led economy, and we don't need to miss this opportunity. The banks had a foot on the throat by the past administration, and that foot has been removed by President Trump's administration.

I'm speaking out as a large shareholder today and an owner operator with the majority of my net worth tied up in this company. We care about performance, and we know who we work for. And my entire executive team is vested in the stock, the same as I am. This is not our job. It's our future. We try to distinguish ourselves from the pack by being one of the 10 or 12 best performing banks in the country. But at the end of the day, the investors see us as a bank. They paint us with the same brush during all four quarters of 2025. After removing the credit card companies, the auto finance companies,

Home was first, second or third of all banks over $10 billion in ROA, supporting a 2.05% for the entire year. In spite of all the craziness in the bank space, Home has had a record year because we did not make those ridiculous stupid mistakes because it's our money and our future.

Donna, I think I have probably said enough and made enough people mad today, but it is what it is. Back to you.

Well, thank you, Johnny. Congratulations on a great year and thank you for the insightful industry update. Our next report now will come from Stephen Tipton.

Thanks, Donna. As Johnny mentioned, the fourth quarter was another strong performance for Home and Centennial Bank. And by all accounts, 2025 was a great success. Continued strong earnings, asset quality metrics and capital generation, all capped off by our announcement of the Mountain Commerce Bank acquisition in December. Highlighted by strong revenue and continued net interest margin expansion, we were able to produce an adjusted return on assets of 2.05% and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.60.

The reported net interest margin improved to 4.61%, up 5 basis points from Q3 and up 22 basis points from the same period a year ago. The core margin, excluding event income, was 4.56% versus 4.53% in Q3. The loan yield declined by 13 basis points to 7.23%, but was offset by 15 basis points decline in interest-bearing deposit costs to 2.47%. Total deposit costs were 1.91% in Q4 and exited the quarter at 1.86%. Deposit balances improved by a little over $150 million in Q4 and showed growth of $334 million for the full year of 2025. Noninterest-bearing balances remained stable in Q4 and comprised 22% of total deposits.

A top-tier efficiency ratio continues to be a focus and priority for us. And while we had some tailwinds in revenue for the quarter, I'm proud to report an adjusted efficiency ratio of 39.53% for Q4 and 41.29% for the full year 2025. Loan production was one of the highlights for the quarter at over $2.1 billion, highlighted by nearly $1.2 billion from the Community Bank footprint with half of that origination volume coming from Florida. Capital levels continue to grow throughout the year with common equity Tier 1 capital ending at 16.3% and total risk-based capital at 19.1%.

As we've mentioned previously, we're thrilled to be partnering with Bill Edwards and Mountain Commerce Bank in the vibrant Middle and East Tennessee markets. Our conversations have gone extremely well so far. We filed the regulatory applications that is for earlier this week and anticipate a quick process there. We're excited to welcome the MCB employees, customers and shareholders to the Home family soon.

With that said, I'd like to thank our regional and division presidents and all of our bankers on another quarter and a great '25. And I'll turn it back over to you, Donna.

Thank you, Stephen. Next is a lending update from Kevin Hester.

Thanks, Donna. Another year is in the books here at Home BancShares and from a lending perspective, it was one of the best ever. When you combine the fourth quarter loan growth of $400 million with the loan growth we posted through the first three quarters of the year, total loan growth for the year was $922 million or 6.24%. Both CCFG and the Community Bank footprint contributed to the fourth quarter loan growth, and this marks 9 out of the last 10 quarters in which we posted organic loan growth.

I do want to point out that the fourth quarter loan growth number was higher than we anticipated because of $150 million in payoffs that did not occur as scheduled. Even though the origination pipelines remain strong, the migration of these payoffs into 2026 may dampen early loan growth expectations.

Asset quality remains strong with a sequential decline in criticized assets and no material change in the NPA and NPL ratios. We continue to work through the small group of problems that we've discussed previously and have both good and bad news on the DFW apartment loan that we discussed last quarter. The loan sale agreement that we were trying to get closed fell through, but we have applied the significant hard deposit to the balance and our carrying value is at a materially lower number.

We continue to work with other parties to move this credit out of the bank. The Texas C&I credit continues to be a work in process. As I mentioned last quarter, it could end up going to nonaccrual before we get it out of here, and that looks like that could be the case. So stay tuned on that. We entered the new year with a seasoned lending staff that is focused and understands our credit culture. I expect very good things from them. And while it will be tough to compete with 2025, we believe that 2026 will be equally as successful.

With that, Donna, I'll send it back to you.

Thank you, Kevin. And now Chris Poulton has an update on CCFG.

Thank you, Donna. Fourth quarter was a busy one for CCFG. We originated over $800 million in loan commitments, resulting in $236 million in net loan growth. This pulled outstanding loans into positive territory for the year with just under $200 million or 10% growth for the year. You may recall that during the year, loan balances dipped to approximately $1.7 billion before rebounding and closing the year at over $2 billion in total outstanding.

For the year, we originated just under $2 billion in loans and received just over $1 billion in paydowns, payoffs. Both of these figures are a bit higher than average. Similar to Kevin's comments, I would say that as we turn attention to 2026, I do expect paydowns to moderate growth in the near to midterm, but much like this past year, future funding and new volume may largely offset expected paydowns over the course of the year.

Donna, I'll now hand the call back to you.

Thank you, Chris. Johnny, before we go to Q&A, do you have any additional comments?

It was a great quarter and a great year overall. We hung in there pretty good. We didn't make the mistakes and hopefully, our investment community will appreciate our efforts.

Anybody else have anything? Brian, you got any comments to that?

It was a really good year. We blew it out and did quite a bit better than we even had budgeted.

If you remember, I didn't vote for your budget last year. I 427 or something --

425.

I turned I knew we could do better. I thought you were landing behind a maybe. So anyway, I guess we're ready to go to Q&A, Don.

Okay. Operator, we'll turn it back over to you.

(Operator Instructions) John Arfstrom, RBC.

Maybe it's a question for Kevin or for you, John, but what do you attribute the growth to for the quarter? I know you flagged the payoff that didn't happen, but you still had a strong growth quarter relative to what you've had historically. Are the pipelines changing? Or is there anything else that you feel is driving the stronger growth?

John, this is Kevin. So I mean the size and the geography of the loans is similar. It's the same. Most of our loans -- larger loans tend to be construction loans. Those fund over, let's say, 18 months. This quarter, we had a couple of larger loans that were fully funded because they weren't construction. That helped. And we see that from time to time. If they're big loans, they make a difference.

Pipelines are strong. I think it was helpful the last quarter that there wasn't a lot of rate movement. I think that -- when rates start dropping, and we see people doing crazy stuff, and that's -- we're seeing that, that's happening. But if we're higher for longer, then I think that slows down a little bit, and that always helps us. So it's a mixture of two or three different things. It just happened to all come together and make it a little bit higher than what we thought it was going to be.

Okay. But pipelines are pretty consistent. They haven't really changed that much?

Not really, no.

I was pleased -- John, this is John. I was pleased with the loan growth. And we had -- I think Chris might comment, I think you had a large payoff that didn't happen. Chris, do you want to comment?

Yeah. I think that's fair. I think two things for us in the quarter. One was we had a loan that closed at the beginning of the quarter that we had originally scheduled to close in the third quarter. I think we had talked about that before as well that it slipped into the fourth quarter. And then we had a payoff that we expect in the fourth quarter that slipped to the first quarter.

So if you look at things on like a rolling four quarters, rolling three quarters basis, it all kind of evens out. But sometimes you get both those things happen in a quarter and your number pops a little bit. But I just view it as a little bit of timing.

I think Shore had a pretty good month to December. Scott, do you want to comment? I lost you, Scott? Are you on mute? I don't know where Scott is maybe we lost him, but he had a good December. He was telling we were skepting earlier. He had one of the best months in December. So that gave us a little.

Yeah. He probably gave us the most eloquent answer on mute, but I noticed that was good. Johnny, just one more thing, just overall reserve level goals. I know you've expressed the desire to keep the reserve levels high and maybe grow them a little bit. But is 190 enough considering what you've seen with pretty stable and good quality credit?

Yeah. I've always run a 2% reserve and I always run with a 2% reserve. And we had some -- we had a little settlement this time. You don't normally run at a 3% pretax pre-provision ROA like we did this quarter. So we had a little extra money, and I thought it's a good time. I think I said in the past, if we get an opportunity, we'll build reserves. And I just like a 2% reserve. When we get some -- we get an opportunity, we'll probably continue to take that up. So if we don't get an opportunity, we won't take it up. Yes, it's plenty.

The reserve is plenty. But we don't know what's going to happen next, right? We just don't know what's going to happen. Something is going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen. However, it looks pretty good for us for the future. I mean it looks like countrywide, it looks like we may have a -- '26 may be a good year for all of us and '27 maybe even a better year. So I'm pretty excited about what the future yields.

Thanks for your support, John. You've been a supporter since 2006, I appreciate it.

Stephen Scouten, Piper Sandler.

I guess maybe going back to loan growth for a second. I think, Kevin, you said like no major changes, nothing different. But I did see one larger loan kind of get flagged a potential larger energy loan get flagged in some publications. I'm just curious if that's a sector that you guys are lending to any more significantly now at this point in time? And if there's any kind of larger or chunkier loans that were within the quarter's results?

Stephen, this is Kevin. So that particular loan is a loan we've had for some time. I think we upsized it a little bit, but maybe why it got flagged, but it's a customer we've had for a while. I don't know that it's indicative that we're really diving into that market anymore. It's just a really good opportunity that we liked very well and felt like we could size up and got very comfortable with. So will we do that again? We might if we see things we like, but that's one we've had for a while. It's not a brand-new relationship.

Stephen, that was a part. Happy was in that credit, syndicated credit for -- I think it was five or six banks in it at one time. And the lead bank, if you remember, got in trouble, and we took everybody out. So it is from an oil credit perspective, it may be the best oil credit in the country. And it's not -- that's not something -- we're a little nervous about some of those markets. But we like this credit a lot. We like this operator a lot. He's done extremely well. By the way, that's a $350 million credit, and it's at about $280 million now. So that's not the credit that popped the loans up for the quarter.

Got it. Super helpful. And then maybe thinking about deposit growth for a minute. I mean, do you feel like you can drive enough deposit growth to fund the opportunities you guys have on the loan side? And kind of how do you think about the loan-to-deposit ratio from here? I know you used to be willing to run it pretty hot, but I think lately, you've said maybe keeping it between 90% to 95% would be the goal. Just wondering how you're thinking about that.

Stephen, this is Stephen. Yeah, I guess last part first. I mean mid-90%s is probably where we would target. We ended the quarter at 89%. Mountain Commerce will increase that very slightly. They're running a little hotter than we are, but something in the mid-90%s. I mean I think our approach is we've long said we don't run CD ads. We advertise the company's strength. There's certainly opportunities to be a little more aggressive at times from an interest rate perspective if we have to. And the markets that we're in are certainly potential deposit providers for us down the road, particularly in parts of Florida.

So we're optimistic, and I think optimistic in Tennessee as well that the company's strength and our size and branding that Bill and his team will be able to capitalize on that from a deposit growth standpoint, too.

Yeah, that's great. Appreciate that, Stephen. And then just maybe last thing for me. I did notice, obviously, I mean, the reserve at 190, I'm not particularly concerned about anything on the credit side with you guys, a ton of capital, a ton of reserves. But I noticed the 90-day delinquencies on the Shore Premier book did increase a little bit. And I know you said they had a good month in December.

So maybe that's just episodic. But just wondering if there's any kind of change in your view about that line of business and kind of how it's performing or how trends are going there?

Stephen, this is Kevin. So we've got three or four single loans that are kind of one-off in nature that it's just taking longer to get through the process to get them back and get them sold than we would like. And it's a function of just going through your repossession process. Nothing major.

One boat that we've talked about for six months now was arrested. We're in 50% on the dollar, a $10 million boat, we got less than $5 million or maybe probably got $5 million in it now. We can't get it out of the court system, but this keeps -- the attorney had a cardiac problem. I mean every kind of excuse in the world, they keep doing, but we're in good shape on that boat.

We've had the boat for nine months. I mean --

We've had it for nine months. We got to rest it for nine months. We're paying the ticket on it. It's eating, by the way. So it's just getting it out of the court system is a hell of a problem. And you'll see $5 million of that pop go away pretty quick when that happens. And he says he's going to pay for it and he says he's going to refinance it and he begs the court and the judge gives him another 30 days. I don't know, it's frustrating. The boat will be 20 years old for get it back, I guess. I hope not.

So they had a good -- I've talked to him this morning about exactly what you said about we see anything. And one of them was the guys shot himself. I mean it's a lot of scattered stuff and probably -- we got four or five others that probably -- I think about the fact that what you loaned on it and what we're going to get out of it and how much losses in there and maybe you need to improve our loan-to-value a little bit on the origination. As it turned out, only half of these were -- we had originated the other half we bought in pool. So I feel better about that.

Got it. That's great color. Congrats on a great 2025. Look forward to watching another great year here in '26.

Thank you and thanks for your support. You've been a great supporter, and we all thank you for that. We know you wrote the best report on this time. So thanks.

Matt Olney, Stephens.

Appreciate all the details on the loan pipelines. I was looking for more color on loan pricing. Some of your peers are talking about incremental data points around loan pricing getting a little bit tighter more recently. I'm curious what you're seeing and hearing with respect to competitive pressures in various markets from CCFG to the Community Bank.

Well, I'll cover -- this is Scott. I'll cover the Community Bank. I mean we're seeing some really silly stuff. I mean it's one-off here and there, it's different groups in different locales. So it's not one group. But I mean, we saw a deal of floating at prime minus 75 with no floor, a ceiling of 6 and you can fix it at any point during the next 10 years. I don't know how you compete with that. So I mean there is crazy stuff out there. I think it does slow down a little bit when you don't have rate drops. If we stay here for a little while, maybe that gets a little better, but it's silly.

When yesterday they asked for 160 or 170 reduction in rate I told them I've never done that before, 160 or 170 in rate. So anyway, it's just -- they're starting -- I mean it's starting. It's the kids got the money and running with it. So this is the toughest part. This is the toughest part of the cycle that we're going through as rates come down is watching these people. Yesterday, Kevin said it has no floor. And you can set it any time within 5 or 10 years, whatever, it's hilarious. But I mean, that's what you got to deal with. And you got to live with it. It's just part of banking. It's a silly, silly part of banking, but that's what it is.

I'd say our groups navigated through all of this competitive environment really well. I mean I think the community bank originations in Q4 were about [6.90%]. And I think in December, reflective of the last two drops, we're in the [6.75%] range on a coupon plus fee. So our folks are still doing a great job and getting the yield should.

Yeah. Good. Well, I appreciate that color. And then just, I guess, following up on the margin overall. I mean, the core margin continues to move higher. I think we're at [3.50%] -- or 4.53% this past quarter. Curious kind of what you see the puts and takes on the margin as you move into 2026.

Matt, we've said for a year now, we just hope to keep it flat and it continued to go up a little bit. So I guess, I'll say we hope to keep it flat, maybe it will go up a little bit.

A couple of things there. I mean -- and I guess it ties into your question on competition, but I show we've got about $1.2 billion in fixed rate loans that mature over the course of this year that are in the aggregate about [540]. So there should be some room to bring those up if competition allows, if everybody doesn't trade all this away. So there's some room there. Our CD portfolio is pretty short. There may be a little bit of room there as those mature and are able to work rates down. But again, kind of same thing, competition.

Yeah, I mean, we -- if you exclude event income, we were at 4.56% for the quarter. We actually ended December at 4.59%. So we've kind of got a good jumping up spot for Q1 here. But I think overall, if we can keep it -- if we can hold in this range, we'd be pleased.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I appreciate the color and congrats on the year and looking forward to see what you guys can do in 2026.

Dave Rochester, Cantor Fitzgerald.

I wanted to start back on the great loan growth you guys had. It looked like there was some pretty serious multifamily growth in there with some of that coming through CCFG. I was just curious what got you guys to take a big swipe at multifamily this quarter? What did you like about the loans? Were they larger, more granular? And should we expect to see more of a focus on that in '26?

Dave, I'm going to let -- you mentioned Chris. I'll let Chris answer for him, and then I can give a little bit of a color on the Community Bank side.

Yeah, Dave. Yeah, we had a couple of loans this quarter where we had some clients that purchased the multifamily, either purchased multifamily loans or purchased multifamily assets, and we were levering those. So I don't know that we necessarily step back a few months ago and said, let's do a lot of multifamily. A lot of what we do is we have a kind of a roster of clients who we've done business with for a long time, and they talk to us about the things they're doing, and then we decide if we're going to do those. It happen to be a lot of multifamily right now.

What we are seeing in multifamily is there's a particularly bad vintage of multifamily from like 2021-ish range, plus or minus months, where those -- that vintage hasn't done that well. And so some of those are now trading hands and a lot of our a -- lot of my clients buy either distressed or semi-distressed or expiring loans and things like that. So I think that's really what drove that this quarter.

Got you. So I mean, if that's a particular vintage, and I would imagine those came up on resets and whatnot. Is this something that maybe we could see over the next couple of quarters at least as a nice driver for growth?

I like the trade. We'll see how many more there are, right? These happen to come along right now. I think there's a few more potentially coming through. So again, I think it depends a little bit, I would say, but we like that trade. We think there's probably more to go there, but how much of that we'll end up doing, we'll just have to see. It's a little bit about whether our clients are full up on that now or not as well.

And earlier, you guys had talked about a lot of your production, your loan production was in Florida. Was a lot of this in Florida?

For CCFG, no. A lot of Sunbelt and some New York, but we generally don't do a lot of Florida because I think the bank has a great team down in Florida that's got giving the bank pretty good exposure to Florida. I have a little bit in Florida, but we don't really concentrate on Florida.

I was going to say a segue to the community side. some of our growth will be, as we said before, construction stuff, that will be things that we've already closed that are now funding. So that's part of the third quarter. We still got a really good -- there are some really good places in Texas and Florida to put new projects. And so that's what the Community Bank is mostly focused on. And I think you'll continue to see that as long as there are good markets for us.

Great. Appreciate that color. Maybe just one last one on expenses. Those were down a little bit this quarter on a core basis, and you guys have done a really great job keeping a lid on the run rate all year. How are you thinking about that run rate heading into '26?

I'll take it. Yeah, I mean, if you look at where Q4 was, we had about $0.5 million in merger expense. You take that out, we were just shy of $114 million. We're going through the budget process now. It looks like 1%-ish in terms of growth. On a stand-alone basis, obviously, we're targeting the MCB acquisition early in the -- early this year. That will add some to the run rate before we get to the end of the year and get the integration happening there. But I think fairly well controlled and aside from merit increases and things this time of the year, we should be in good shape.

Catherine Mealor, KBW.

I want to follow up on the margin.

When you turn those kind of numbers out, I'm pretty happy, as I said, pretty happy camper.

Okay. I'm glad you can hear me. So my question is just circling back to Mountain Commerce. And just thinking about when we fold that acquisition in on day one, they've got a 250 margin. I know you're going to be able to mark that balance sheet and then probably lower their funding costs over time. But kind of curious how we should think about any initial changes that you'll make to their balance sheet, either in wholesale CDs or their borrowings or if that will be more of kind of a gradual thing to model in over time?

Catherine, this is Stephen. I think from a funding standpoint, I think that's something we'll model over time. Like I said earlier, I mean, we're optimistic that Bill and Kevin and the team with the larger balance sheet and the strength of the company can expand relationships and grow deposits in that market that would enable us to maybe work out of some of the wholesale funding that they have, but I think that will happen over time. I think when you -- like you said, when you mark the balance sheet, our initial indications are little to no impact on where our net interest margin has run here over the last couple of quarters.

We've had some good opportunities already in Tennessee with some -- one of them was an Arkansas customer who's buying something in Tennessee and picked up the phone and called us and said, "Hey, I see you're going to Tennessee. And I said we are and they said, "Well, I just bought something $4 million, $5 million, whatever it was. So I hope to work with Bill and his team and they're moving on that loan.

And then yesterday -- day before yesterday, David Carter, a recent President out of Jonesburg Coins, small world. Somebody who went to school with is one of the largest customers for Mountain Commerce, and they -- Mountain Commerce had topped out with him and he said, "I'd sure like to do a lot more business with you guys." And as it turned out, he's a big customer of Mountain Commerce, and we can help him with his growth in the future.

So two good leads. That could be multi, multimillion dollar credits there. So good stuff from the start just from announcement. So we'll be able to -- they'll be able to do bigger deals with our balance sheet behind them.

Great. Glad to hear that. And maybe on that theme, just with M&A, it feels like you're on track to close that still early. You said early in the first half of the year, kind of think in beginning of second quarter, but let me know if you have a different opinion of that. And so if that's the case, how quickly do you think you'd be interested in looking at further M&A as you move through the year?

Well, I think we're open. Hopefully, we close this April or May, and we're certainly looking for opportunities from there to do another -- we think we could do another one this year. We're open. We're open for the right opportunity.

Is that what you were looking for?

Yeah.

Brett Rabatin, Hovde Group.

I wanted to go on the M&A topic, I certainly hear all the stuff that you said, Johnny, about buyers in the past, maybe not having done great deals. One of the other things that investors complain about is, hey, do you -- should you own buyer stocks? And I think there's some pessimism that maybe you shouldn't own buyer stocks. How does that factor into your thoughts on M&A and just what that does to your stock price?

How does it factor in the fact of whether we buy our stock or don't buy our stock? Is that what the question was? I don't get the question.

Yeah. Well, just there's market sentiment from investors that maybe you shouldn't own the buyer stocks because they don't perform very well. And you guys have been acquisitive. I just I'm curious if hearing that from investors makes you more or less apt to maybe do M&A versus looking to do other stuff organically.

No. We'll continue to do M&A and our first entree into Tennessee with Bill and his team, we'll let them guide us in Tennessee, and we're certainly open to something in that market, but we're not closing the rest of the markets either. I mean if we found something in Texas or we found something in Florida that fits our bill, we'd certainly move on it and wouldn't hesitate. There's not a lot left in Florida to speak of. There's quite a bit in Texas to do, but we're certainly open to M&A. And so far as us continue to buy stock back, that's just one of the things we do.

When you run -- if you heard me say this, when you run a 2.10% ROA, you can buy back stock and you can increase your dividend and you can grow tangible common equity all the same way. I think we grew tangible common equity 16% or something last year, almost $2 a share in growth in tangible common equity and a couple of hundred million shares. So that kind of puts it in perspective. If you don't make that kind of money, you can't do that. When you make those kind of returns, it gives you -- you can pull, as I say, every capital handle that's out there and take care of your shareholders with a reward and grow the bank, too.

Okay. I appreciate that color, John. And then the other thing was there's been a lot of comments about Florida. You just mentioned there was still stuff to do possibly in Texas. Where is the Texas franchise at this point relative to -- you obviously had the gain in 4Q. Is all of the noise around all that stuff died down and you're in a net growth perspective for Texas from here? Any thoughts on how the Texas piece is performing and what you might expect from that part of?

It's performing today the way it was supposed to have performed three years ago. So we had a little bit -- early on, we had a little bit of good performance and then we kind of fell off. And as you know, the trouble we had out there. And now it's back. So the Texas operation is growing. We had to make lots of changes and lots of cleanups, lots of work to do in that market, but we're getting there. Our Dallas-Fort Worth area is really cleaning up well. Our West Texas area is really cleaning up well.

So we're pleased with that. They're bringing good loans to the table, and we're happy with what we see. So it's probably now where we expected it to be three years ago. That's probably where it is. I haven't looked at that exactly, but that's my feel. I looked back at the P&L at the end of the quarter and looked at where our Dallas-Fort Worth and our West Texas operations were performing, and it's -- they're getting the numbers now. They're part of our system, and they're operating like the rest of us operate, and it's back in the way it should be.

Okay. Good to hear. And then just lastly on that repurchase comment. Are you implying that maybe the pace of the buyback continues at the levels in 4Q? Or any thoughts on how aggressive you might be with using the repurchase plan?

Probably. That's something Stephen and I talk about all during the quarter. And when we see an opportunity and when we're having a great quarter, then we kind of move on it. And if things slow down a little bit for us, we just kind of -- it's kind of a weekly conversation between he and I. So the answer is probably continue. We like to buy our stock. I'd like to buy back. Mount Commerce is 6 million plus shares. It would probably be my goal to buy all of that back over the next period of time.

Thanks, appreciate the support.

Michael Rose, Raymond James.

Maybe just tangential to Brett's question. Just as we think about Tennessee and the opportunity set there, clearly, you've had a big deal in that market. I think on a pro forma basis, you guys are like 20th in deposit market share in the state from day one once this deal closes. What are the aspirations there?

Clearly, as I look at Florida as a case study for you guys, I mean, you guys have made tremendous strides over the years, done a lot of deals. Is the goal to have a similar trajectory? Is it a more targeted strategy? Just how would you describe the opportunity set as we think about kind of the intermediate to longer term for what Home could be in the state of Tennessee?

I think we'll just continue to grow in that market. That's not a market that we've never been in that market before. We've been in Texas before. We've never been in Tennessee before. So we found a guy that's a founder and who built his own bank and as an owner operator, similar to our operation here, and we like that. We like what we see. He's stubborn a little bit on his securities and low rate loans, but we'll mark that day one. It's already marked, and we'll let that -- he'll come out gangbusters pretty quick. We get the expenses out of it over the next 12 months.

Outside of that, we'll let him lead us into that market. I mean we know people that operate in that market through all the bank conferences. As you know, Michael, we meet all those people. They know us and we know them. So who knows what the opportunities are in that market, but we're certainly open to M&A in the Tennessee market. if we see something there or Bill finds something that he wants to do, we'll be on it the next day. We won't hesitate.

We have the capital. We have the ability to mark somebody's balance sheet and fix them overnight, and we'll use that capital. Everybody has always said, what do you want to do with that capital? And I said, well, we'll use it someday. Well, this is someday give us an opportunity to use some of it.

I don't know if that answered your question, but that's kind of how I'm looking at it. Stephen, you got any different observation on that?

No, I agree 100%. We like what we see in the market so far. And I think Bill and his team can provide some opportunities. We've already talked to some names here and there, and we'll see what happens over the course of this year.

No, for sure, it's a great market and obviously a good deal. So I appreciate it. Maybe just one follow-up for -- maybe for Chris Poulton. I think as I talked to banks over the past couple of months, one of the big topics has been just paydowns in commercial real estate and construction, just maybe a little bit of a hangover effect from all the activity that we saw come out of the COVID.

Are you seeing that at all? And are there opportunities to maybe capitalize as maybe some of those paydowns play out to maybe take some market share? Just trying to get a sense for the business. Obviously, one of your competitors is talking about pretty big paydowns this year. So just wanted to get a sense for the paydown level that we should be thinking about? Is it greater than the past couple of years? And then maybe what's the opportunity set as we go forward?

Sure. I think paydowns are elevated. I mean, as I said in my comments, we had higher-than-average paydowns this past year. I think that will continue. There are lots of opportunities for customers to get financing. I would say what we've seen more than anything is nonbank entrants into commercial real estate. There's sort of refugees from the corporate lending side. Pricing has collapsed in corporate lending. And so some of those funds and private lenders have turned their sights to commercial real estate because from the outside, it looks pretty easy, I think, and higher yield.

So we are seeing that. I think we'll continue to see that. I think this is really where the test for us is we've been doing this for going on 10, 15 years, and we've got a good stable of customers who understand who we are and how we can help them make money. And so I think that's the other side of that, which is I think those people will continue to put money out, and we continue to be an interesting choice for them.

If our business was tied to doing a significant amount of volume every year as then we need to take share or take a certain amount of share, etc, I'd be concerned today because I do think it's getting harder. Our business has always been tied to finding those small opportunities out there that are a little off the run, etc, that we can be helpful to people on. Those continue to exist, and I think those will probably continue to probably strengthen.

I'm not sure if that answers your question, but I think we are seeing both those things. We see some paydowns on that, then I think we'll also see some pressure in the main thing. If I was trying to do $5 billion, $10 billion a year right now, I'd be concerned.

Brian Martin, Janney.

I just had a couple of follow-ups to things already answered or things already asked on the call. So just maybe, Stephen, just on the -- or maybe just back to Chris for a minute. Chris, your thought on kind of just given the puts and takes in the year '26, just kind of how you're thinking about net growth for the year? I guess, is it kind of a mid-single-digit type of growth is how you'd be thinking about it with the origination activity versus kind of the payoffs you're anticipating?

That's what I'm currently estimating, right? So assuming the payoffs that we think and the fundings that we think and where we generally come out on lending, I'd be happy with that. And then you have to throw into it would you get a payoff you weren't expecting or things like that? You might.

But again, I think over a long enough period of time, whether that's quarter-to-quarter or month-to-month or over an 18-month period time, etc, I can't tell you within the calendar year what that looks like. But I would expect we'll continue to grow. I believe that to be true. We usually find those opportunities. One of the things we talk about here is the universe expands and we grow. I think that will still continue to be true, and that's what we're projecting.

Got you. Okay. And then maybe just one or two for Stephen. Stephen, just on the margin and expense, I think expenses you were talking about $115 million a quarter, if you use your $114 million number, that's kind of the standalone run rate in expenses and then just factor in the acquisition. Is that fair? And then just a second one on the margin, just the biggest pressure point in the margin today, if you do see some potential compression, where you anticipate that could come from?

Yeah. I mean that's fair on the expenses. That's what we're showing from a budget standpoint. We'll certainly strive to do better there, and we're talking with our presidents every day on where we can do.

On the margin, our folks have done a fantastic job this year, navigating the rate decreases and being able to certainly hold on to customers and grow relationships while getting rates down. It feels a little bit today that outside pressure from the loan side is kind of the wild card. And you heard Johnny say earlier about a customer that was looking for 150 basis points rate decrease, Kevin's comments about some stuff we're seeing from competition. So whether that stands to tighten things up a little bit, we'll see. But I mean, I still think we get our fair share and protect our franchise and what we have and try to keep it in this 4.5% range would be pleased with.

Got you. Okay. That's helpful. And maybe just one for Johnny on the -- you talked a bit about the M&A. Just kind of the pipeline today on M&A. And I guess, any commentary just on smaller versus larger deals, how you're thinking about the next 18 months or so, where you'd be looking more?

Well, in terms on the geography, we've got enough in Texas right now that we could get some savings there. We certainly have enough in Florida to get some savings, not particularly in Tennessee yet, but one of those markets, the Florida deal would probably be -- make us -- I mean, that would probably make more sense for us right now. However, unless Bill brings a Tennessee deal from some opportunity he thinks would be good for us.

So I'm open. I'm just open. I think there's opportunities. And a matter of fact, I know there's opportunities in all 3 states right now. So we'll just have to see which one makes the most sense. We're not going to dilute our shareholders, as you heard. We've never done that. We're not going to do that. Well, we may have diluted them a little bit early on and happy for a couple of years, but that wasn't an intentional dilution. That happened to us. But since then, we never did it before, we won't do it again. So we find the right trade to do that.

As long as our currency -- we continue to perform way we are and our currency holds up the way it is, it gives us the ability to do those transactions. So I guess my word to those that are running three is get themselves to a 2% before they go out and do something just makes all the sense in the world.

And maybe just the last one for me was just -- I don't know, maybe for Brian Davis. Just Brian, is the kind of the noise or the extra income in the quarter relative to the Texas resolution. I mean, is fee income kind of a core number around -- yes, call it, $45 million. Is that kind of a clean type of quarter as you look at some of the noise that was in there this quarter on the fee income side?

Yeah. The $4.9 million was really the only noisy thing that we had in noninterest income.

That's a good level. Okay. Just want to make sure that. And then the last one was just for Kevin. Maybe, Kevin, you went through the commentary about nonperforming. Can you just give a little thought or maybe just -- maybe I missed what you said in terms of what the puts and takes were on credit? Like what could be resolved in the next quarter or 2? Or kind of what's the status of those couple of credits?

So the DFW apartment credit, the sale that we were working on, the notes that we were working on fourth quarter fell through, but we had a pretty good-sized deposit that was hard that we applied. So we're still working with others, and we hope we'll get that moved soon. It may take a little longer than I'd like, but we're still working.

Texas C&I credit is -- we're working it through. I think it may get to nonaccrual before it gets resolved. But again, we don't think we're going to have any additional loss there. We took a charge-off a year ago, fourth quarter, and we think that our -- that we're okay there. So we're just continuing to work through. It's the same problems we've been talking about for a couple of quarters. And it just takes -- sometimes it takes a little while to get rid of a problem.

Yeah. And how big are those credits, Kevin, ballpark in terms of the department in the C&I?

Departments 10 C&I credit is about 90. 90 to 100.

Looking forward to a great '26.

Thank you for your support. We appreciate it.

This concludes our Q&A. I'll now hand back to John Allison for any final remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. It was a great quarter, great year for Home BancShares, and we appreciate all your support, and we'll continue to be -- we'll represent your investment properly and do the right thing and hopefully make the right investments for all our shareholders. We are a shareholder -- pro shareholder company, as you know, and we'll continue to do the right thing for the shareholders.

Anybody else got a comment before we close out today. Thank you very much for your support. Have a good day, and we'll talk to you next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, today's call has now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.