Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Great Southern Bancorp Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, [Christina Maldonado]. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Great Southern Bancorp's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Today, we'll be discussing the company's results for the quarter ending September 30, 2025. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, forward-looking statements may be made regarding the company's future events and financial performance. These statements are subject to various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or projected. For a list of these factors, please refer to the forward-looking statements disclosure in the third quarter earnings release and other public filings. Joining me today are President and CEO, Joe Turner; and Chief Financial Officer, Rex Copeland. I'll now turn the call over to Joe.

All right. Thanks, Christina, and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our third quarter results reflect the continued strength and consistency of our core banking fundamentals and a solid earnings performance in what remains a competitive and dynamic environment. Core credit and operating results remained strong, supported by disciplined expense management, prudent loan underwriting and a stable deposit base. We reported net income of $17.8 million for the quarter or $1.56 per diluted common share. That was up from $16.5 million or $1.41 in the same period a year ago. The year-over-year increase in net income primarily reflects improved net interest income, no provision for credit losses and continued management of noninterest expense. These results demonstrate our ability to deliver consistent profitability while carefully structuring the balance sheet and maintaining a conservative risk profile. Net interest income totaled $50.8 million for the third quarter, an increase of $2.8 million or 5.8% compared to the $48 million reported in the same period a year ago. Our annualized net interest margin improved to 3.72% from 3.42% a year ago, reflecting stable loan yields, disciplined asset liability management and effective funding cost control in a highly competitive deposit environment. Core deposits held steady during the quarter, underscoring the strength of our customer relationships and the value of our community banking business. On the lending side, gross loans totaled $4.54 billion, which was a decline of $223 million or 4.7% from December 31, 2024. The decrease primarily reflects elevated commercial real estate and multifamily loan payoff, along with a reduction in outstanding construction loans as many projects were completed. Given our emphasis on balancing loan growth with appropriate pricing and loan structure, loan production in the quarter only partially offset the heightened payoff activity. Construction lending continues to show solid…

All right. Thank you, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll provide a little more detailed review of our third quarter 2025 financial performance and how it compares to both the prior year period and the previous quarter. As mentioned, we reported net income of $17.8 million or $1.56 per diluted common share in the third quarter of this year compared to $16.5 million or $1.41 per diluted common share in the third quarter of 2024 and $19.8 million or $1.72 per diluted common share in the second quarter of 2025. The decline compared to the prior quarter was primarily the result of a decrease in noninterest income and a modest increase in noninterest expense. A couple of things in the second quarter this year, we had some significant nonrecurring income in the noninterest income category and also about $450,000, I believe, of interest income that was on some unbooked items. And so we did have those good news items in Q2. Net interest income was $50.8 million compared to $48 million in the third quarter of 2024 and $51.0 million in the second quarter of 2025. The annualized net interest margin was 3.72% compared to 3.42% in the year ago quarter and 3.68% for Q2 of 2025. Interest income totaled $79.1 million compared to $83.8 million in the third quarter of 2024 and $81.0 million in the second quarter of 2025. The year-over-year decrease reflects a slightly lower interest-earning asset base, mainly due to a decrease in average loan balances, along with lower prime and SOFR market rates, which impacted interest rates on variable rate loans. The average yield on loans decreased 23 basis points to 6.21% from 6.44% in the prior year period. Interest expense for the third quarter of 2025 was $28.3 million compared to $35.8 million in…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Damon DelMonte with KBW.

First question is kind of on the loan growth outlook. I think the comment was you hope to keep balances steady for the remainder of the year. Could you guys just talk a little bit about where you're seeing the best opportunities across your footprint? Maybe which regions are showing the most optimism for growth and maybe compare that against some of the slower ones?

Damon, I mean, I think there's opportunity really in kind of every pocket of our footprint. We're still seeing opportunities in Texas, Atlanta, certainly our St. Louis, Kansas City, our core markets, those would be some that I would highlight, although I think we're having origination requests kind of across the franchise. It's just that payoffs are elevated as well.

Got it. Okay. And then your credit quality has been exceptional. Kind of more broadly speaking in the industry, we've seen some kind of one-offs apparently that are, they are popping up for a bunch of folks. Are there any segments of your portfolio where you might be seeing some signs of weakness?

No, I don't really -- I couldn't say that we're seeing anything that broadly enough that you would say we're seeing general weakness. I mean, we do, from time to time, see a project, maybe it's a multifamily, maybe it's a retail that leases up slowly. So -- but I would say -- I would call that more idiosyncratic to that specific project as opposed to broader weakness. The 2 events that I saw, I don't know if that's what you're talking about, but a company that has significant factoring relationships and then a subprime lender and we're not involved in those sectors at all. We sort of stick to our knitting on the credit side.

Got it. Okay. Appreciate that color. And then kind of along the lines of credit and outlook and we talk about provision a little bit. With the modest outlook for loan growth, it's probably fair to assume just a minimal provision just to kind of provide for any net growth that you do have, is that a reasonable way to look at it, correct?

I think so, and I guess if there was a net charge-off of some sort, we would probably cover that as well.

Right.

Got it. Okay. I guess if I squeeze one more in there, just kind of on the rate sensitivity. We just -- we saw a rate cut last month and just kind of kind of your thoughts on if we see another 25 basis points or a couple of 25 basis point cuts going into the latter part of the year, kind of how the margin is positioned for that?

I mean from a margin perspective, I think we feel like we're pretty well positioned with that. The rate cut that happened in September has not so far really impacted us. I mean we've been pretty steady on net interest income and margin since that. Rate cuts generally, if they're pretty moderate and spaced out a little bit. Shouldn't be harmful. I don't think. If you recall back several years ago when rates fell dramatically and went way down, that's when everybody, including us, kind of had some issues, maybe with losing some margin there for a while, took a while to gain it back. But overall, I don't think that minor and spaced out rate cuts would really be too impactful probably. Now remember, we know we're going to have the $2 million per quarter that we had been enjoying for a long time on that terminated swap is now over. So we obviously have that factored into the fourth quarter here and beyond.

Our next question comes from John Rodis with Janney.

Rex, just on operating expenses, net interest -- yes, operating expenses. Do you think you can sort of keep them around this $36 million level? Or how should we sort of think about that?

Yes. I mean I think some of the things in the occupancy category and equipment category that I mentioned, those are probably kind of built in now as we've made some enhancements to systems and things of that nature. Some of the other things related to maybe the legal and professional fees. Hopefully, those are kind of peak there and maybe come back down a little bit in future periods.

Yes. I think you're -- we try to highlight, John, anything that we think is unusual. And as Rex said, the we did kind of have a higher level than normal of legal fees. I mean, I don't think we would characterize any of the higher spend in equipment expense, occupancy expense. We wouldn't characterize any of that as unusual. So I mean, I think it was a pretty normal quarter from a noninterest expense standpoint. We will have normal merit increases and so forth for employees kind of throughout the year. And those are usually a couple of percent. So that's going to be probably decent growth.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. I don't know, Joe or Rex, just -- you guys sort of highlighted in your comments the commission line item in fee income. I've never seen that commission line item that high before. Just is this a new level? Or how should we think about commissions going forward?

Yes. I mean it's not a huge dollar amount. I mean, it's, what, $566,000 in the quarter. So it's not a super large item. But it is larger than we kind of have historically been. And we've had -- it's been elevated maybe a little bit here in the last couple of quarters. So I -- it's hard to know for sure, John, because it's just kind of individual customer related kind of stuff. So to the extent that people are interested in the products, maybe it stays at that level. But I don't know -- there's not like any kind of big program per se, that we're like focused on that to try to drive additional income or anything there. So I would say we're sort of at a higher level, like you said, than we've been for a while and whether that can be sustained, I can't honestly tell you for sure.

I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Joe for any further remarks.

All right. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for being on our call today, and we look forward to talking to you again in January. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.