Primis Financial Corp (FRST) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, welcome to the Primis Financial Corp. Second Quarter Earnings Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference call over to Matthew Alan Switzer, chief financial officer. Matthew, please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter webcast and conference call. Before we begin, please note that many of our comments during this call will be forward looking statements, which involve risk and uncertainty. There are many factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the forward looking statements. Further discussion of the company's risk factors and other important information regarding our forward looking statements are part of our recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including our recently filed earnings release which has also been posted to the Investor Relations section of our corporate site, primisbank.com. We undertake no obligation to update or revise forward looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events or changes to future operating results over time. In addition, some of the financial measures that we may discuss this morning are non GAAP financial measures. How a non-GAAP measure relates to the most comparable GAAP measure will be discussed, when the non-GAAP measure is used if not readily apparent. I will now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Dennis J. Zember Jr.

Thanks, Matthew. And thank you to all of you that have joined our second quarter 2026 conference call. We are very pleased with our second quarter results, and pretty excited about how things are moving going into the last half of 2026. When I compare our current results to last year, I see strong growth in revenue, very contained operating expenses, increasing net interest margins, lower efficiency ratios, lower levels of nonperformers, steady growth in earning assets, growing levels of non interest bearing checking accounts, and importantly, tangible book, over 20% from last year. Lastly, really nice to see some stability, Matthew, return to our operating results. Which I believe is critical to making sure our work is appropriately valued. For the second quarter, we are reporting net earnings of $9.4 million or $0.38 per share compared to $2.4 million or $0.10 a year ago. During the current quarter, we did book a gain on the sale of an investment in an insurance agency of about $5.9 million and we fully offset that with a legal settlement and a reserve build on our largest office CRE. Because these items wash, I believe our stated ROA for the quarter of 90 basis points is really the recurring level that we are working with, and I am very pleased to see this kind of improvement. These results include a net interest margin of about 3.45%, up a couple of basis points over last quarter but up almost 60 basis points over the same quarter a year ago. That margin growth comes alongside steady earning asset which has happened for several years now. For the quarter, we averaged about $3.9 billion of earning assets, which is up about 11% compared to the same time a year ago. The increase in margins and earning assets combined with really strong performance from our mortgage company, allowed us to have our first quarter ever with more than $50 million of core revenue. That level is 40% higher than it was a year ago. Making sure that revenue moves to the bottom line is critical. And the recurring pace we have had with investors is that operating leverage will be our main strategy. Matthew can give you a lot more context, but I am showing that our core OpEx is up about 15% over the past year compared to the 40% growth in revenue I just talked about. Of that 16%, 7.3% is tied to the increase in mortgage revenue. And 4.7% is tied to the lease expense from the sale-leaseback. So actual growth in OpEx, the real controllable part, is reliably less than 5% This is outstanding work by our executive team and our staff and it has totally reset the operating performance you can expect from our bank. In the quarter, we had a nice improvement in credit quality, with non-moving down by 36% thanks to a single C and I loan that was refinanced elsewhere. And then additionally, we were able to upgrade a mixed-use commercial project that finally reached stabilization. So collectively, classified assets declined by about $53 million or 36%. And as we stated earlier, we built additional reserves on our largest office loan by about $5.3 million in the quarter. Lastly, before I turn it over to Matthew, we announced in the press release a series of earnings improvements are coming out of our core consolidation project. Altogether, we believe the impact on next year's results is about $7 million pretax, which includes zeroing out the amortization expense from the original bill of the court. This set of improvements is about 13 or 14 basis points in ROA, about $0.22 per diluted share. that is important. But from a strategic standpoint, what is so special or noteworthy about this is that I firmly believe that this announcement, all guarantees another year and a half of outside operating leverage similar to what we have put up this year. that is very exciting for our team and our board, and we believe should meaningfully improve the kind of results we put up in 2027. Matthew, with that, I will turn it over to you.

Thank you, Dennis. As a reminder, discussion of our financial results can be found in our press release and investor presentation. Located on our website and in our 8 ks filed with the SEC. As Dennis has mentioned, Primis reported earnings of $9.4 million or diluted earnings per share of $0.38 in the second quarter compared to $7.3 million or $0.30 per share in the first quarter of 2026, and $2.4 million or $0.10 per share a year ago. Return on average assets was 90 basis points versus 76 basis points in the first quarter and 26 basis points a year ago. There are a few notable presentations in the quarter that we will review in more detail later in my remarks, but on balance, was a quarter of solid operating results. With pretax pre-provision operating net income of $11.7 million up 185% from $4.1 million a year ago. Turning to the balance sheet. Gross loans held for investment increased approximately 8% annualized from March 31 to June 30 and were up 11% year over year, led by continued growth in Panacea and Mortgage Warehouse. Average earning assets increased approximately 14% annualized in the quarter and were up 11% compared to the year ago quarter. Average deposits were up approximately 12% annualized in the quarter, and average noninterest bearing deposits were up approximately 24% annualized with average noninterest bearing deposits representing 16.3% of average total deposits in the second quarter versus 14.3% a year ago. Net interest income was approximately $33.8 million up from $32.1 million last quarter and $25.2 million a year ago. Our net interest margin in the second quarter was 3.45% up from 3.43% last quarter and 2.86% in the year ago period. The improvement reflected robust earning asset growth funded at attractive incremental margins with 3 basis points of linked quarter expansion in the yield on earning assets. Core bank cost of deposits remains very attractive at 1.6% for the quarter compared to 1.79 in the same quarter last year. Cost of total deposits was 2.25% in the second quarter, up 1 basis points linked quarter and down 28 basis points year over year. Cost of interest bearing deposits was 2.69%, down 25 basis points from the same quarter last year and total cost of funds was 2.46%, flat with the first quarter and down 21 basis points year over year. Our focus on growing noninterest bearing deposits remains a key part of our strategy to continue controlling funding costs as we grow the balance sheet. Our provision this quarter was $5 million compared to $1.5 million in the first quarter and $8.3 million a year ago. Approximately $5.3 million of the second quarter provision was related to specific reserve additions for 1 nonaccrual credit. Absent this item, improvements in specific reserve amounts largely offset provision amounts related to portfolio growth, the consumer loan program. Nonperforming assets, excluding portions guaranteed by the SBA, improved to 1.45% of total assets at quarter end. From 2.35% at March 31 and 1.9% a year ago. Core net charge offs were 53 basis points in the second quarter, up from 6 basis points in the first quarter and 15 basis points a year ago. Driven by 1 nonaccrual loan that was resolved in the quarter. Noninterest income was $22 million in the quarter, $13.6 million in the first quarter and $18 million a year ago. Second quarter included a $5.9 million pre tax gain from the liquidation of an insurance agency investment, while the year ago quarter included a $7.5 million gain on the company's investment in Panacea Financial Holdings. Mortgage related noninterest income grew 44% year over year to $11.4 million in the second quarter and Primis Mortgage closed volume was $421 million up 30% compared to the second quarter of 2025. We also reported $1.6 million of gain on sale income related to the sale of Panacea loans and guaranteed portions of SBA loans, including approximately $237 thousand attributable to the core bank. On the expense side, when you exclude mortgage the Panacea division volatility and nonrecurring items, our core operating expense burden was approximately $25 million versus $22 million in both the first quarter of this year and the second quarter of last year. As previously disclosed, the first and second quarters of 2026 include a full quarter of lease expense net of reduced depreciation of approximately $1.4 million from the sale-leaseback transaction executed in the fourth quarter of 2025. The second quarter also included several discrete expenses, including $1.1 million related to the settlement of a previously disclosed mortgage lawsuit for $8.4 million, an increase in loan related expenses and $200 thousand of higher marketing costs. There was also approximately $900 thousand cumulatively of small expenses related to the company's recent shelf filing, exchange fees, and the core conversion project. We expect the noninterest expense burden, excluding Mortgage and Panacea, to return to the $22 million to $22.5 million range in the third quarter of this year. I would also like to briefly add Dennis's comments on how we are thinking about operating leverage from our core consolidation initiative and artificial intelligence. During the last 6 months of planning for the core conversion, we have identified $6.1 million of expected earnings improvements from fully converting the core bank in all divisions onto our real time fully digital core. These improvements are equally centered on revenue and expense opportunities, with $3 million of revenue improvements as we rationalize products and fees, and $3.1 million from contracts and vendor consolidation and will largely be in place in early 2027. These amounts are real and we believe highly achievable in the time frame highlighted. This also does not include the amortization expense related to capitalized platform development costs of $800 thousand per quarter that will end in the third quarter of 2027. Lastly, we are also in the beginning stages of deploying AI tools in agents to drive ongoing productivity improvements that we believe will allow us to limit expense growth and maintain strong operating leverage for the foreseeable future. In summary, we are excited to report another solid quarter of continued year-over-year improvement in profitability, net interest income, margin, asset quality, and tangible book value per share. We believe the balance sheet momentum, core consolidation work, and ongoing prior productivity initiatives, keep us on track to hit our profitability goals and put us on a path to superior returns. With that, operator, we can now open the line for Q&A.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press 1 again. Please pick up your handset when asking a question. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from Woody Lay with KBW. Your line is now open.

Please Hey, good morning, guys. Morning. I wanted to start on the net interest margin. Now, it feels like we are in a higher for longer, and like a general theme this earnings period has just been the magnitude of competition both on the loan and deposit side and what that is meaning for pricing. So I would I would love to just get your thoughts on how you see the NIM outlook from here.

Similar to what we discussed on previous quarters, we think where we are right now, plus or minus a basis point or 2 is probably where we will be for the foreseeable future. We are seeing some pressure on the earning asset side, maybe a little less on the funding side, but certainly some pressures in the loan pricing. So we have some levers there. A notable 1 is we have some, subordinated debt that is available to refinance, that we think we are going to be able to do at some point in the next quarter or 2 and we will save us probably between 200-250 basis points on the cost of that debt. So that will should more than offset any incremental pressures on the margin from the balance sheet.

Got it. that is that is helpful color. And then maybe shifting over to credit, it was great to see the quarter over quarter NPA improvement. I was just hoping to get an update on that larger office CRE credit that is still on the books. And could you just remind us what the total reserve total specific reserve you have against that credit is now?

Yeah. Woody, it is a little over $11 million of reserve The credit, the borrower's still working with us and yeah, investing in T&I and commissions to lease it up. We did have a relatively large lease at least an LOI for it signed in the second quarter. So there is activity, in the borrowers working hard to get it leased up. We are working with them as best we can. So, we do have a pretty healthy reserve on it at this point. Got a couple million dollars of cash reserves almost $2 million in cash reserves. The borrower is making payments. So it is in nonaccrual, but not 90 days past due. The borrower does, and like, you know, But just we just wanna keep adding reserves there whenever we can to reduce whatever kind of earnings volatility might come out of that, Woody.

Yeah. That makes total sense. And then last for me, in regards to the core conversion those additional impacts you are planning that could begin in the run rate in 2027? Are there any larger onetime costs remaining with the core conversion that we should expect? Not overly I mean, we may have smaller implementation fees here and there in the next couple of quarters, but we are talking like a few hundred thousand dollars. Nothing really. No, you would not even really notice. Yeah. Alright. Perfect. that is all for me. Thanks for taking my questions.

Your next question comes from the line of Russell Elliott Gunther with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, guys. I wanted to start on the loan growth outlook. Really strong first half of the year, good 2Q. I think, Matthew, you mentioned even a larger C and I. Payoff in the quarter. And growing through that. Would be helpful to get a sense for how you are thinking about loan growth in the back half of the year both from an order of magnitude and asset class perspective?

I mean, I will start, Matthew, and you can jump in. you know, we have not had a lot of panacea growth this year. We have been selling most of that. Tyler's got a good, flow agreement. I think we will see more growth on that side of the balance sheet in the second half of the year In mortgage warehouse, we keep, with rates up as tremendously as they are. Thought that might slow down. But, actually, you know, new customer acquisition and, sales efforts there have countered that trend. And so you know, I still think there is a little bit of risk on growing mortgage warehouse. I think we can probably hold something close to the levels that we are at. I think maybe even go up if you asked our head of warehouse yesterday. I think he would say we could go up from here just given the pipeline But I do not think it will be as tremendous as what you have seen for the first half of the year. And the core bank's got a great pipeline. So I think all 3 together, I think, the back half of the year probably will look a little bit like the first half of the year. Yield wise, I think they are definitely incremental to where you see where our loan book is right now. And I do not see really just back to Woody's question about margin. I do not see anything incrementally with growth that would be dilutive to the current margin. And you see where we are growing deposits, you know, the core bank, warehouse. Digital, versus earning asset growth, I still think it is positive and incremental to the margin. Yeah. I agree with all that.

that is helpful, Dennis. Thank you. And, yeah, it looks like the deck calls out with some nice fixed repricing over the next few quarters as well. So, good to see. You know, Matthew, you mentioned with regard to the margin, a bit more pressure on the average earning asset side incrementally relative to deposits. I think as we are wrapping up the end of earnings season here, a lot of focus has been on just incremental deposit costs as a headwind to margin. So how are you guys kind of defending against that?

Well, the nice thing is, a lot of that growth in the first half of the year has been mortgage warehouse. And they fund about 10% of their growth themselves with which is close to non-interest bearing. They may have a little bit of interest expense, but it is by and large all non interest bearing. So it is been very additive from a mixed standpoint. Digital bank has shown some nice growth at similar rates to where they have been the last quarter or 2 some of that has actually been small business driven, which has been nice to see. And the core bank has done a really good job growing in footprint. So I mean, we are not I am not saying we are immune to you know, pressures on cost, but arguably, we have a few more levers that we can hold and a lot of other banks, that are helping us. Stay pretty consistent to where we have been.

I think, you know, adding to that, think our digital advantage our national advantage just continues to pay dividends. I think even with rates being up a little, I guess, the short term side, maybe not. But with the attitude of higher rate, it is really not a affected what we are doing on digital. I think we are still at a competitive level. And there are a lot of banks. I have seen that Russell reporting, a little more pressure on the deposit side and maybe the margin build that the industry is saying has kind of reached an end. Because a lot of it has been sort of funding driven But for us, I do not think we probably never harvest all of the deposit opportunity anyhow. Because we had so much earning asset growth. So I think we are probably in a better position on the deposit side to stay competitive.

Understood. Okay. it is helpful context, guys. Thank you. And then just last 1 for me on the expense side of things. Matthew, thanks for level setting us in terms of where that kind of core expense run rate should hit Q3. I just wanted to clarify in terms of the incremental expense initiatives, that 3.1 million is really incremental to anything you have called out in the past? And if so, you know, that looks like it is an early 27 event. How you would expect that kind of core expense run rate to maybe exit Q4 or trend over the course of next year.

I think that our expectation is that 22 to 22.5, 2023, whatever you want, somewhere in that range. Kind of our baseline for the next few quarters. And then the savings from the consolidation will be incremental to that. Down. Okay. it is nothing we have called out before.

We have never talked about these savings on the revenue or the expense side. Alright.

Very good. I appreciate all the help, guys. Thanks, Russell.

Your next question will be from the line of Steve Moss with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Most of my questions have been asked here. How's it going? I just want to follow up on the office nonperformer here. Just curious in terms of just thinking about the drivers of the additional provision. I hear you in terms of the gain. But with the borrower leasing up or having LOI, at least, I guess, I should say, you know, how are you thinking about the potential timing of resolution? And, you know, did you get a new appraisal to drive some of this provision?

The driver of the provision was really while there is leasing activity, and then, we did get a pre-lease LOI signed in that quarter. We have gone 12 months since we put this thing on non accrual, and vacancies only moved a little bit at the margin. And so just with the passage of time, we had as we do our evaluation work, we had to add to that specific impairment to account for the fact that we have not made much progress on vacancy as we should have over the last 12 months.

We are accounting for this on a DCF. Versus the appraisal because the borrower is not collateral dependent. Yet making payments and still investing And so we are accounting for it on a DCF and Matthew just got more aggressive with the DCF and with some assumptions. And we have sort of been telegraphing that we wanna keep building reserves here. And so we were able to do that in a quarter.

Okay. that is that is helpful. And then just in terms of the mortgage warehouse business, I hear you guys in terms of, you know, obviously, a tougher environment to grow, but good customer pipeline. Just kind of curious, where are spreads these days for that business?

Just 1. Spreads. Oh, spreads. I mean, it depends. You know, if you are if you are talking to a mortgage company that does you know, a couple billion a year you are probably somewhere SOFR plus 200 all in with fee. If you are talking to a smaller nondelegated customer, you are probably maybe SOFR plus 300 plus with fees. It just depends. So things were at sub-SOFR or no-rate Which mortgage rates are 6.5%. Yeah. And then we add 50 basis points fees on that. So yeah, there is some customers who are still probably paying 7%. Yeah. It just all depends. I mean, all in for us, you know, we are booking margins there. That are, you know, pretty comparable. Our all in margin on that business is very close to where our entire company's margin is. The efficiency ratio there is really the play. Efficiency ratio in that group is right now probably just over 20 percent 21, 22%. We could probably you know, double the portfolio, double the client base, double the throughput with very little increase in OpEx other than maybe incentives. And probably push the efficiency ratio down to 15%. So that is really the ROI play. Month in, month out in the second quarter, it was over 2% ROA. After tax. So I mean, it is really good business for us. Great.

I appreciate all the color there. Thank you very much, guys.

Your next question is from the line of Christopher Marinac with Brean Capital. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Dennis and Matthew, I wanted to go back to the core bank, and I guess I just wanna get a little more background on sort of the margin change this quarter. Is that something that can go back? And then as you continue to work on the expense side, would that lead to even better returns in the core bank next year? Yeah. The when you say the core bank, Christopher, you are sort of excluding what Warehouse, Panacea, that or just the core bank sort of without the mortgage company. Well, I am really looking at slide 6. I am just kind of leveraging off of you know, kind of the details there and the margin that you cited there, then, I guess, the strong PPNR ROA.

Oh, I see what you are saying. Yeah. I think I mean, The core bank, the core bank, you know,, Panacea and Mortgage Warehouse and August Mortgage are all big contributors to the ROI. The incremental business there is great. it is interesting. The core banks incremental ROA on new business is better than all of that because they drive a lot of -- they drive a lot of their ROA and margin with checking accounts. The core bank's cost of deposits is remarkably low. Really, when you look at our cost of deposits, our cost of funds is balanced by about a billion dollars of the national stuff that you know, fuels the funds, the national stuff like panacea and warehouse. But when you exclude that, the core bank's incremental margins are outstanding. The core bank's growth rate is not as tremendous as the rest of the bank. I think the core bank's growth rate, I would probably put at 5% or 6%. it is nice to not have to push our folks hard there. We are able to focus on sort of non like, the things that we are focused on owner occupied CRE, C and I, residential builders, strong residential builders, really to support the mortgage company. But we are really not focused at all on investor CRE. it is very rarely even gets in our pipeline. The margins on what we are bringing in, we do not have to compete all the way to the to the very bottom, to the unprofitable level. I think if we were relying only on the core bank for all of our growth, I think it would definitely impact the margins. If you look at where we are right now, and, Matthew, I do not know if this includes the probably includes the sub debt. And margin So, I mean, I think if you look at where we have reported this quarter at $3.65, for the margin, you would probably add you know, 7-8 basis points at this on this balance sheet for the sub debt refinance And then I think when you look at the, where rates are right now, say, with the 5 and the 10 year, Christopher, I think the upside on repricing for the existing commercial book. Is pretty strong. So I would say there is probably 10 basis points of upside over the next year on this margin. You know, the efficiency, when you look at the core bank here, and you talk about the earnings enhancements that are coming out of the core project. The 1 area that our core bank has sort of been a laggard on has been noninterest income. We have sort of built the bank not really focusing on fee. So I think this look in the core project at looking at products and services and rightsizing those fees is pretty important. there is no chance that there is any kind of expense build in the forecast. That would, exhaust all the savings we came up with, not even close. I mean, we are definitely out looking for new lenders and new teams. But there is 0% chance that could exhaust these savings. So I would say between the margin build and revenue there, and the savings, you are probably looking at taking another 5 or 6 points off the efficiency ratio. Okay. Great. that is all very helpful. Thank you for sharing all that. And I guess kind of a related question. As you execute the systems change and kind of realize those cost savings. It would seem to me that you have a competitive advantage at that point that might be parlayed into other relationships of banks you look at or other opportunities down the road because you could get more out of it? And I was curious how you sort of think about that. I mean, I wish I had Pixie Dust, and I can just make all of these savings and another year of earning asset growth happen because I mean, I just see us reaching, you know, efficiencies in the fifties and the ROA. You know, the margin's gonna continue to inch up a little bit with repricing. You know,, we are absolutely, I think, unquestionably the most balanced bank from interest rate risk standpoint given our position So I just I know what the next call it, 6 quarters are. I do really wanna get to that point. But on the competitive advantage, I mean, we are gonna finish next year. We are gonna have the entire bank on the most modern real time core out there. Unquestionably. We will be the most flexible bank in front of the customer. that is a competitive advantage. That contract, you think with that advantage that we would be paying out the notes for that. Actually, our contract given that we are an early adopter and our helping build it, our contract's gonna be probably half of what a bank our size would be paying for that. And it is fixed So if we grow the bank to 8 or $10 billion that does not scale. I mean, it is fixed, and so it just accrues to the bottom line to our shareholder. I think, really, the competitive advantage we need is just 6 more quarters. Of continued improvement let all these results happen, and, just sort of over time prove that our models as valuable as we think it is. And, you know, there is a slide in there, Christopher, that talks about where we are. Priced to earnings and priced to book. And Matt and I understand that. Absolutely believe we are gonna erase that. Discount And over the next call it, 4 to 6 quarters as we prove this. Really present an opportunity for our investors. And I am sorry if I rambled there. I mean, I did ramble. I am sorry.

Oh, no problem at all. I appreciate that color. And I guess last question for me is if the mortgage market is still in the same kind of zone of being sort of sluggish a year from now, do you just continue to tough it out to knowing that at some point it will shift back? Definitely. I mean, our mortgage company Just keep surprising us. I think we had the best quarter we have ever had in mortgage. Closed the most loans, had the highest level of profitability. I am not gonna sit here and act like rates are a problem or are not dampening the profitability and the upside opportunity. Absolutely they are. I mean, we should probably be 20% or 30% better in this summer season. But our folks are just dynamite on the sales side. And on the OpEx side, I mean,, they just manage so tight. They are so profit oriented. So, yeah, I think, you know, And our folks are pretty offensive too. I mean, when rates are like this right now, you can probably recruit you know, really good mortgage loan officers. If, when rates are, you are selling a 5.5% 30-year, it is hard to move a mortgage loan officer. So our folks are definitely on the street looking for you know, to add to the ranks. Over time, we definitely believe rates will probably ease back a little once there is a little less volatility. On the other side of the world. But we yeah. We are pleased with what our mortgage company has done. On top of it. Probably 8% to 10% of their volume is portfolio product. And a lot of that is construction-to-perm, Which is only with us for a short period of time before it gets refied away. But while it is with us, I mean, those spreads on that are very good. Their most of their construction book is probably new originations are probably in the mid sevens. And comes with nice fees. So you know, there is the retail piece of it, but there is also what they do for the portfolio. Great. I will leave it there.

Thank you all for your questions. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back to Dennis J. Zember Jr. for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Alright. Thank you all for joining our call. Hope everybody has a good weekend and a good summer. And Matt and I are both available for calls if you wanna reach out to us. Alright. Thanks. Have a great day.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.