Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Great Southern Bancorp's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that 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 Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Today, we'll be discussing the company's results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 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 fourth quarter earnings release and other public filings. Joining me today are President and CEO, Joseph Turner; and Chief Financial Officer, Rex Copeland. I'll now turn the call over to Joe.

Okay. Thanks, Christina, and good afternoon to everybody on the call. We appreciate you joining us today. Our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results reflect the sustained success of our core banking operations and our commitment to long-term tangible book value appreciation despite a volatile economic environment. Throughout the year, we remain focused on preserving net interest margin, protecting credit quality, controlling noninterest expense and opportunistically repurchasing our stock. For the fourth quarter, we reported net income of $16.3 million or $1.45 per diluted common share compared to $14.9 million or $1.27 per diluted common share in the year ago quarter. For the full year, net interest income totaled $71 million -- net income, I'm sorry, totaled $71 million or $6.19 per diluted common share. These results happen because of resilient net interest income, strong asset quality, and prudent asset liability management despite ongoing loan and deposit competition and fundamental economic pressures. Net interest income for the 2025 fourth quarter totaled $49.2 million, which was a decrease of $371,000 or 0.7% compared to the prior year quarter. As you'll recall, we did lose the income from our terminated swap during the fourth quarter. We lost most of that income and the quarterly income had been $2 million. So that's the primary reason for the small decline. Additionally, we have lower loan balances, which resulted in some lower interest income. But despite those factors, effective management of funding costs reduced interest expense and mostly offset the decrease in interest income. This resulted in net interest margin expansion. Our margin grew from 3.70% this quarter, 3.7% from 3.49% in the year ago quarter. Core deposits remained relatively stable, reflecting continued customer engagement and the underlying strength of our relationship-based banking model. Net loans receivable totaled $4.36 billion at year-end, representing a…

Thank you, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll now provide a more detailed review on our fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial performance and how it compares to both the prior year period and the linked quarter. For the quarter ended December 31, 2025, we reported net income of $16.3 million or $1.45 per diluted common share compared to $14.9 million or $1.27 per diluted common share in the fourth quarter of 2024 and $17.8 million or $1.56 per diluted common share in the third quarter of 2025. For the full year, net income was $71.0 million or $6.19 per diluted common share compared to $61.8 million or $5.26 per diluted common share in the prior year. Net interest income totaled $49.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $49.5 million in the prior year quarter and $50.8 million in the third quarter of 2025. Interest income totaled $73.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $82.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 and $79.1 million in the third quarter of 2025. The year-over-year change primarily reflects the discontinuation of the previously terminated interest rate swap that Joe mentioned earlier, which was providing $2 million roughly in quarterly income prior to the fourth quarter. Also, along with that, we had lower average loan balances and lower average market interest rates in the fourth quarter of '25 compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. While market rates move lower, the impact on loan yields was somewhat moderated as cash flows from lower rate -- fixed rate loans originated in prior years were redeployed into loans with comparatively higher rates. Interest expense totaled $24.3 million in the 2025 fourth quarter, reflecting continued reductions in deposit and borrowing costs as repricing dynamics moderated and wholesale funding remained…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is going to come from the line of Damon DelMonte with KBW.

First question just regarding the margin. A pleasant surprise this quarter. I think given the impact from the swap, we're expecting the margin to come down pretty substantially, but you were able to offset that, it looks like with some lower funding costs. So just kind of curious as to how you think about the margin here as we start off 2026.

I think so far, we -- as you said, we performed a little better than we thought we might in the fourth quarter with that. We were able to bring some of our funding costs down, we're trying to manage that pretty proactively with the different avenues that we have to provide funding whether it's deposits or wholesale funds, et cetera. So we're trying to work through that and manage those -- the cost side of it. I think what we're seeing, too, on the interest income side, we are seeing some of our loans, which were put on the books maybe a few years ago at maybe some lower short-term fixed rates, and some of those are renewing or we're just getting repayments on those and we're able to redeploy those funds in a little bit higher rate -- the current market rate than we had on the books before. So it's a combination of a few of those things. Obviously, the first quarter, there's fewer calendar days. That shouldn't affect the margin percentage as much per se, but dollar-wise, we'll expect to be down some because of just a number of days in the quarter.

So do you think you're able to manage it so there's just a modest amount of compression? Or I mean, do you think you can make it -- have it go higher from here?

I don't know that -- I mean, you can jump in, Joe. I don't think we can expect to see it go higher necessarily.

Yes. I think, Damon, until the Fed takes some action, I think we will see our -- maybe our core CD portfolio since that's sort of a lagging portfolio, maybe some of that will reprice and we'll see some interest expense go down there, but that's not a very big portion of our deposits. Most of our deposits reprice pretty well immediately. And so I think we've probably gotten about all we can done on the deposit portfolio. So there won't -- there probably won't be any more improvement there. The loan portfolio, as Rex said, I guess, if there is a bias, it would be a slight bias to go maybe a little bit higher, but it's not very meaningful in the overall scope of our level of net interest income. So I mean, as we said, we don't give guidance. But I think looking at the fourth quarter, I don't see anything that would make it be a whole lot different than that.

Okay. Got it. And then with respect to the outlook for loan growth, it sounds like you're continuing to have good production, pipelines are healthy, but you continue to face elevated payoffs. Do you expect those payoffs to slow down at all to a point where we can get some net growth here in 2026?

Yes. I think it's still going to be a challenging loan growth market for us because there's just -- while there's good activity, it's not great, and there still is outsized loan portfolio or loan payoffs. So I think that's going to be our challenge going forward.

In the fourth quarter, we did have 1 or 2 kind of unique loans. They were short-term loans and they paid off, and we knew that was going to happen. So that was one sizable one for sure. And we did generate new loans and had some growth. Some of the loans are construction deals where they are not going to fund immediately, but others were ones where they were existing projects, and so we did fund those day 1. I think there will just be, like Joe said, there will be some more continuation of that. But I don't know that I see that -- I don't have a lot of clarity as far as what might pay off. We do have a pretty sizable multifamily portfolio. And I think that was where we saw quite a bit of the repayment with the exception of the one loan I mentioned was in that multifamily. So it's hard to know exactly the timing and magnitude of how that's going to go.

Yes. It really is hard, Damon. I mean we try to keep track of it. We try to guess, but it's sort of up to the borrowers. Some of them choose to maybe pay us off with a debt fund. Some of them choose to take a sale that's maybe at a lower price than they would be able to sell it for maybe a year or two down the road. So it's sort of the ball is in the borrower's court to a big extent. So it's really hard to give you any guidance on that.

Got it. And then if I could just ask one more question on expenses. Fourth quarter came in much better than what we were looking for. Should we kind of expect an uptick off of this quarter's level, just kind of given a reset with salaries and benefits and things of that nature?

Yes. I mean, I think that's fair.

We do have a lot of our employee base does have annual normal increases and a lot of those happened at the beginning of the year. Payroll taxes will reset. And generally, there will be some increase in that compared to the fourth quarter. So there are some factors, as you say, there that play into that.

Our next question is going to come from the line of John Rodis with Janney.

Joe, just sort of back to the loan question from before. Loans were down 7% this year. I know payoffs are hard to predict, so I appreciate that. But do you think maybe you've seen at least the worst of it? Or do you think loans could be down a similar amount in '26.

It's just really hard to say, John. Obviously, I hope we've seen kind of the worst of it. We really like our loan portfolio. And we're working hard to originate stuff. So I hope that's kind of like a high watermark for paydowns. But because loan repayments is such a big part of the calculation, it's just hard to kind of guarantee that one way or the other.

I continue to originate and -- but we are also maintaining some pricing discipline, obviously, credit term discipline. So we're going to continue that. We want to maintain credit quality obviously. So there's been growth, new loan originations in 2025. We just had payoffs that were outpacing a bit.

Okay. That's helpful, Rex. Rex, just on the securities portfolio, how should we think about that going forward? It was down a little bit this year? What sort of cash flows do you expect for the year?

Yes. I mean, the portfolio is about the same now as it has been for most of the year. So nothing really different about it. So probably similar type -- assuming rates don't change a whole lot, probably similar type of payments. Maybe since rates are lower now than they were to start 2025, maybe there'll be a little bit more repayment. But the portfolio is mostly, as you can see from our filings, it's mostly mortgage-backed. It's all agency stuff, some SBAs,some municipality stuff, but by and large, the bulk of it is going to be some sort of an agency pass-through types and things of that nature. So we do get some monthly payment stream from it, but it's not large amounts necessarily. The portfolio is fixed rate stuff. So it's not changing around based on rates from that standpoint as far as our yields and such go. So I don't know that -- I mean it's not probably going to be dramatically different in '26. I wouldn't think unless the rates move down enough that there's a kind of a larger amount of prepayments that go on.

Okay. And as far as the cash flows, you're not really reinvesting right now, are you?

No, we've pretty much been taking the cash flows and reinvesting in loans.

Yes. Okay. Okay. Just one more question on the buybacks. You guys have been fairly active. And I think for the press release, you leave almost 700,000 shares currently. All things equal, would you expect to repurchase most of that this year?

I mean, we're -- Yes, we like where our stock is trading at, John. Obviously, it's a little bit higher than it was in 2024, but I mean, our book value is a little higher, too. So I mean I think even with the recent run-up in stock price, we're still trading at less than 115% of book. So we see that as a good value. And particularly while we're not growing a lot, a good use of capital.

Yes. You've definitely got the capital to support it.

Thanks, John.

And I'm showing no further questions at this time. And I would like to hand the conference back over to Joe Turner for closing remarks.

All right. We appreciate everybody being on the call today, and we'll look forward to talking to you in April. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.