SmartFinancial (NYSE:SMBK) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Monday. Read the complete transcript below.
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The full earnings call is available at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/980529382
Summary
SmartFinancial reported Q1 2026 operating earnings of $13.7 million, or $0.81 per diluted share, with total operating revenue of $53.8 million, showing growth from the previous quarter.
The company experienced 14% annualized loan growth and 7% annualized growth in core deposits, maintaining strong credit performance with low non-performing assets.
SmartFinancial's net interest income increased to $45.9 million with a net interest margin improvement to 3.48%, supported by a reduction in funding costs.
The company adjusted its allowance for credit losses with a new model, resulting in a provisioning increase, and hired a new Director of Private Banking and Wealth Management.
Management expressed confidence in achieving a $4 EPS run rate by Q4 2026 and emphasized ongoing organic growth and strategic recruitment efforts, particularly in key markets like Nashville.
Full Transcript
Clare (Moderator)
Hello everyone and thank you for joining the SmartFinancial first quarter 2026 earnings release and Conference Call. My name is Clare and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation you can register a question by pressing STAR followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press STAR followed by two on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to Nate Strohl, Director of Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead.
Nate Strohl (Director of Investor Relations)
Thanks Claire and good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for SmartFinancial's first quarter 2026 earnings call. During today's call we will reference the slides and press release that are available in the Investor Relations section on our website smartbank.com Billy Carroll, our president and CEO, will begin our call followed by Ron Gorzinski, our CFO will provide some additional commentary. We will be available to answer your questions at the end of our call. Our comments include forward looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and actual results could vary materially. We list the factors that might cause these results to differ materially in our press release and in our SEC filings which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward looking statements because of new information or early developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law. During the call we will reference non-GAAP financial measures related to the company's performance. You may see the reconciliation of these measures in the appendices of the earnings release and investor presentation filed on April 20, 2026 with the SEC. And now I'll turn it over to Billy Carroll to open our call.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks Nate and good morning everyone. Great to be with you and thank you for joining us today and for your interest and SmartBank. As usual, I'll open up our call with some commentary and hand it over to Ron to walk through some numbers in greater detail. After our prepared comments, we'll open it up with Ron, Nate, Rhett Miller and myself available for Q&A. It was a great start to the year for our company with another very busy quarter as we continue to execute on our strategy of leveraging the great foundation we've built over the last several years. Our team's focus on this execution continues to be outstanding and this first quarter of 2026 was yet another example of that. So let me jump right into some of our highlights. First, and in my opinion one of the most important metrics we continue to increase the tangible book value of our company, which is now up to $27.33 per share, up from $26.86 at year end. For the quarter we posted operating earnings of $13.7 million or $0.81 per diluted share, with total operating revenue coming in at 53.8 million, higher than the 53.3 million in the prior quarter. Even with two fewer days, we continue to execute on outstanding growth on both sides of the balance sheet, posting 14% annualized growth in loans and 7% annualized growth in core deposits. Our history of strong credit continues with only 25 basis points in non performing assets. I'm very pleased with our credit performance and our extremely low level of non-performing assets and operating non interest expenses also came in on target at $32.9 million as we continue to exhibit expense discipline. Looking at the first few pages in the deck you'll see our continuation of some very nice trends. We're building a we're building our return metrics and most importantly growing total revenue, earnings per share and tangible book value. All of those charts are great graphics to illustrate our execution. I'm looking forward to and expecting these trends to continue. So a couple of additional high level comments for me on growth. Our balance sheet expansion is a direct result of the focus of our sales teams. Our continued evolution as an outstanding organic growth company is one of the things I've been most proud of and I believe something that sets us apart from many other banks. We have hired well and we have built an outstanding process on prospecting and bringing in new client relationships. I would argue that we are in a top a small top of class group when it comes to pure organic growth. As I stated, we grew our loan book 14% annualized quarter over quarter as sales momentum stays strong and balanced across all of our regions. Our average portfolio yield including fees and accretion held up well at 6.02%. Regarding deposits, again, core deposits were up 7% annualized excluding when excluding brokered CD payoffs. Plus we absorbed a large seasonal withdrawal early in the year. So all in all a very nice deposit quarter. It's important to recognize how we're building this bank with core relationships as we have intense focus on both sides of the balance sheet. A couple of other highlights noted in our release Bullets included an allowance for credit loss model change that bumped their provisioning during the quarter. So we accomplished these results while adding an outsized provision adjustment with the new ACL model that better suits our company. Ron's going to discuss this a little bit more in a moment. We also had a senior team addition with a new Director of Private Banking and Wealth Management from an in market regional bank that I believe is going to elevate this the work that we're doing in this area even further. We don't talk a lot about our wealth and investments platform, but this business line has steadily grown over the last several years as we've added some outstanding private bankers and new financial advisors. This focus on assisting high net worth clientele is becoming a great business driver for us and with our strategy we can go toe to toe with any regional or national player. So all in all a very nice way to start 2026. I'm going to stop there, hand it over to Ron and let him dive into some details.
Ron Gorzinski (Chief Financial Officer)
Ron thanks Billy and good morning everyone. I'll start by highlighting some key deposit results during the quarter. Our momentum remains strong with non broker deposits increasing by 95 million driven by two factors, new deposit generation at a cost of 2.82% which was 22 basis higher than the previous quarter and seasonal inflows. Given the strength in core funding, we took the opportunity to pay down the remaining 52 million in broker deposits which carried an average rate of 4.35%. And as we noted on the last call, our year end totals included some transitory non-interest bearing deposits. As those deposits rolled off and put some and put and clients put some excess liquidity to work. Non interest bearing deposits were over 18% of total deposits at quarter end. Overall interest bearing deposits declined by 19 basis points to 2.60 and were 2.58% in March. We continue to maintain a robust liquidity profile as demonstrated by our loan-to-deposit ratio of 87%. Net Interest Income for the quarter was 45.9 million which was 782,000 higher than the previous quarter even though this quarter had two fewer days. Our Net Interest Margin also improved by 10 basis points to 3.48%. This increase was mainly driven by an 18 basis point reduction in funding costs which more than offset a 3 basis point decline in asset yields. The reduction in funding costs resulted from the full quarter effects of the prior quarter's federal rate cuts, the previously mentioned paydowns of higher cost brokered funding and new deposit generation and CD renewals at lower rates. The decline in asset yields was caused by a 6 basis point reduction in loan yields mainly due to the impact of the rate cuts mentioned above and the pay downs and payoffs of higher rate loans. This reduction was slightly offset by our strategic utilization of balance sheet cash. The rate average yield on new loan production for the quarter was 6.40% and 6.45% for March. Looking forward, we anticipate that our margin will stabilize and remain relatively flat for the second quarter before increasing slightly in the second half of the year. Turning to credit, our provision expense for the quarter was 4.1 million, which includes 926,000 attributable to an increase in our unfunded commitments liability. As mentioned during the last earnings call, we've updated our Current Expected Credit Loss allowance model enabling broader capabilities such as economic forecasting tailored to loan segments and stronger qualitative adjustments. Details about this model update will be included in our first quarter 10-Q filing. Due to the changes in our modeling approach and quarterly activities, the allowance for credit losses increased to 44 million, representing 0.97% of total loans compared to 0.94% in the previous quarter and our liability for unfunded commitments totaled 4.5 million, up from 3.6 million. Looking forward, we anticipate that the allowance will remain within the 97.98basis point range contingent on prevailing market and credit conditions. Furthermore, our asset quality metrics remain robust with non-performing assets accounting for just 0.25% of total assets and net charge offs were limited to 2 basis points. Operating non interest income was 7.9 million, down slightly from the last quarter but exceeding expectations. Higher investment services fees offset lower mortgage banking and capital markets revenue which was lower primarily due to seasonality. Other income sources met or modestly surpassed expectations. Operating non interest expenses for the quarter increased slightly to 32.9 million, which was modestly below our guidance. Salary and benefit expenses were higher, mainly due to variable compensation on stronger than anticipated production as well as our annual merit increase adjustments that started in March. We also reduced our Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insurance accrual by 275,000 this quarter, but expect this expense to return to normal levels in future periods. Our operating efficiency ratio for the first quarter remained around 60% plus level, showing our continued focus on improving margins and controlling costs. For the second quarter, non interest income is projected to be approximately 7.8 million and non interest expense is expected to be in the range of 34 to 34.5 million. Salary and benefit expenses are anticipated to range from 20.5 to 21 million, slightly elevated from the prior quarter due to the full quarter effects of our merit increases and new hires. Our accruals for incentive based compensation will fluctuate based on performance and may vary throughout the year. I'll conclude with capital the company's consolidated Tier 1 Capital ratio increased to 8% and our total risk based capital ratio remained well above regulatory well capitalized standards at 12.7%. Overall, we believe our capital levels remain optimally balanced to continue to support growth while maximizing returns on equity. With that said, I'll turn it back over to Billy.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks Ron. As you can tell from Ron's comments, our trends continue to have a nice trajectory. We are successfully executing on the leveraging phase of growth for our company and on our return metrics. We feel very confident in our ability now to move through the 1% and 12% Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) thresholds as we look into 2026. I mentioned on our last quarter call our internal 4x4 Challenge of hitting a $4 earnings per share run rate by the fourth quarter of 2026, so basically hitting $1 per share in earnings per share by Q4 of this year. We rolled that initiative out internally during the quarter and our team embraced it. We've got a little bit of work to do, but we've had a nice start to the year and we're going to continue to push to hit that earnings per share target. I like their chances on accomplishing this goal. We believe we're one of the brightest banking stories in the Southeast, outstanding growth markets paired with strong, experienced bankers and a very focused executive team. Our primary effort will be on generating more operating leverage throughout 2026 with our focus on doubling down on our organic strategy and getting deeper in our markets. As I mentioned, pipelines are solid and I think we can continue growing at this high single digits plus pace. Talen acquisition continues to be a high priority for our company and I really like what I've seen during the first part of this year. We've continued to add select revenue producers in several markets and have several more committed to come on board soon. We're constant recruiters and I like our position as we continue seeing market disruption in the South. Just an anecdotal comment on that. I was at a client event in Alabama last week and I had a new Smart bank client that one of our new bankers has brought brought over to us come up to me and say how much he enjoyed working with us, saying you guys could do everything the regionals can do, but you're better and more nimble. That sums up our business strategy and our recruiting strategy and we're having great success with both so we will continue to look for these organic growth opportunities and remain very focused on recruiting. So to summarize, we kicked off a very solid 2026 and we are positioned very well. We are executing growing revenue earnings per share and book value and staying prudent on expense growth. We remain optimistic around our ability to add balance sheet growth and have a nice tailwind coming with rate resets in our loan portfolio over the coming quarters. Credit remains very sound and on goal setting, we're executing on this year's 4x4 initiative as we have line of sight to $4-plus earnings per share target. And I also wanted to add how excited I am that we've elevated Cynthia Cain to our chief Operating officer role. Cynthia is one of the best leaders in our company and will be tasked on aligning all of our operational and tech initiatives. She's going to do a great job in this role. I appreciate the work of our Smart Financial, Smart bank team and the efforts of all of our associates. I'm very proud of what we've got going on here at smbk. So I'm going to stop there and open it up for questions. Questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Now, if you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Brett Rabiton from Stonex. Your line is open. Please go.
Brett Rabiton
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, yeah, Brett, I'll start. And Rhett, you can chime in from what you're seeing in pipelines as well. But yeah, it has, you know,, we had, we had a, again, a really solid first quarter. Our pipeline's still good. As I said in my comments, I think we can continue, you know,, at, you know,, at or around that 10% plus minus, might be a little more, might be a little bit less. But I like our pace. Competition is, I'll tell you, we were talking about this other day, we could, we could have had a lot more. We, you know,, we we're turning away some deals, some good deal, just because we're seeing some unreasonable rate competition. And that's okay. I mean, we just, you know,, one of the things, and like you've heard me comment on it in past calls is you know,, we've really got a nice disciplined approach around our pricing model. You know, and again, growing both sides of the balance sheet is really important for us. And so you know,, as you know,, not that we won't make an exception here or there for the right types of situations, but for the most part we really hold to making sure that we're hitting, you know,, our return on risk adjusted capital targets. And so we are seeing some, some competition that's a little bit crazier. We're letting some of those deals go. We're involved in them. Sometimes we just think the price seems too thin. But I, I mean, Rhett, you might talk a little bit about pipelines and just how you feel about kind of this, you know,, high single digits plus pace.
Rhett Miller
No, Billy, you kind of stole my thunder because I was going to say the same thing, that despite the growth we saw, we actually could have, we could have produced more had we not been a little, not been as disciplined as we were on our, on our return requirements. So the pipeline itself though continues to backfill at a pretty consistent pace. I mean, you know, as we kind of monitor this growth cycle we've had for the past several quarters, you see in the numbers, the pipeline just continues to backfill each quarter end when we look at and what we've got coming for the balance of the next couple three quarters. So it, you know, all indicators are that the market pace is still good. There's a lot of opportunity out there and we are certainly getting our fair share. Yeah, Brad, I'd also add it's not just Tennessee, it's all across the footprint. Alabama and the Panhandle have been very strong as well.
Brett Rabiton
Okay, that's, that's great. Okay, guys appreciate all that.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
And then just wanted to ask on the, on the balance sheet management, you know, your loan to deposit ratio has increased the past year and you talked about paying down some brokered CDs this quarter. But just wanted to hear you guys thoughts on, you know, managing the balance sheet. The loan to deposit ratio, there's an upper, upper limit that you guys might, might have on that and then just funding the growth, you know, where, where you think that comes from, you know, in terms of product and how you're going to do that. Ron, you want to take that sure.
Ron Gorzinski (Chief Financial Officer)
We, we've been hovering around the 86, 87% loan-to-deposit ratio. You know, we're not afraid to go up to 90, 90 plus. But at this point we don't see the need. Our, our deposit generation has been strong throughout our footprint. As you can see for Q1, a lot of it's been money market generated. We are weaning off on the CD side. We feel the relationship building of that money market category has been pretty, pretty special for us going forward. Other than that, you know, again, relationship building and a lot of, we have a lot of deposit opportunities in our footprint.
Brett Rabiton
Okay, great. Appreciate the call, guys.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Russell Gumper from Stevens. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Russell Gumper
Hey, good morning, guys. did a great job dropping those this quarter within the margin update you guys provided.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
How are you thinking about the ability to lower deposit costs from here if the Fed does remain on pause, do you have some incremental room or should we be thinking about potentially some upward pressure on deposit costs going forward? Ron, you want to take that? I think from what Russell's saying, I think with rates being up a little bit, probably have a little bit more pressure on that. But you want to discuss kind of thoughts around deposit costs moving forward?
Ron Gorzinski (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, we're pretty neutral at this point in time. You know, we've, you know, our flatness is really due to the fact that. We have seen some mix shift in our deposit portfolio. You know, our team has done a great job of expanding our margin over the last several quarters, but we're seeing coming into a period of seasonality. Second quarter for us is traditionally a heavy cash quarter for clients for tax payments and other sources and other uses. Even though we've seen competition through our footprint, as you'll probably get a question on that. Our team has done a great job of bringing in deposits and keeping the rates down. So in essence, I think we will still see a little bit of rate movement upward, but we're only looking at very few basis points quarter over quarter from here on. So pretty neutral at this point.
Russell Gumper
Okay, that is very helpful. And then, you know, you led the witness here a little bit. Let me follow up on your deposit cost competition.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
And it, it's also a follow up to Brett's Very good question. I mean, the Southeast is always a competitive place to operate. Maybe just high level. You know, how would you describe the environment this quarter incrementally, has that high level of competition increased? It sounds like on the loan side, but perhaps address the deposit side too. Yeah, yeah, I'll grab that one, Russell. Yeah, it has, I think competition is, is, is ramping up. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I mean you've got a lot of banks that are out there, you know,, looking for growth. We've been fortunate. Again, I go back to, you know,, I think our process has really been good and I think that's what's allowed us to drive growth and continuing to do it at rate levels that we're comfortable at. But yeah, and it's on both sides. You know, Brett talked about loan pricing. It's the same on the deposit pricing side. You know, we're seeing especially with thoughts around maybe a flatter rate environment in 26. I think it's fueling a little bit of fire to keep deposit rates higher. So you know,, I think we're going to, we'll contend with that, you know, but again we're, our deposit growth is not always rate sensitive. You know, I know we've, and I've talked about it on prior calls. The treasury management team that we have in our company is, you know,, and they're doing such a great job with their commercial bankers and you know,, we're bringing in some really good, just good corp. Operating business outside of just kind of where prevailing money market rates are. And so I like, I like the way we're growing the deposit side. I think we're, I think we can continue to do it like that. Ron said probably have a little bit of mix shift this quarter that might give us a little bit of kind of short term pressure. But, but all in all, I still think we continue to kind of do it at the same levels that we've been doing. Great. Thanks Billy. And then guys, this last one for me follow up in terms of very helpful to get production yields this quarter,
Russell Gumper
the 640 and the 645 in March.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
And I always go right to that repricing slide on number 14. How are those kind of yields holding relative to what's coming on in the pipeline? Is that kind of similar levels or do you see some pressure there? Yeah, I think it's, I think it's close to the same, maybe a little bit of additional pressure on those Russell. But, but all in all we're getting some nice yield pickup. So you know, I think we're trying to be strategic and trying to be out in front of you know, these, these rate resets and maturities well in advance. But yeah, we're watching it closely, maybe a little bit of additional pressure just like new production today, but still to the positive. Ron, I don't know if you've got anything to add on that.
Ron Gorzinski (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, the renewals and the repricing has been obviously a tailwind for us. We are renewing 88% of, of the loans that are coming up for repricing or renewal. That's and are coming in about 120 basis points higher. So as they're very similar to the rates for today, maybe 10, 10 basis points lighter but still very strong in that area.
Russell Gumper
That's great color guys. Thanks for taking all my questions.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks Russell.
OPERATOR
Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from Catherine Mehler from kbw. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning.
Catherine Mehler
Yeah, good morning. One follow up on the margin is in your guidance for the margin to be flat this quarter and then expand slightly in the back half of the year. Do you have any, what are your rate forecasts under that scenario?
Ron Gorzinski (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, we're flat. We're not, we're not assuming up or down at this point in time.
Catherine Mehler
Okay. So no more rate cuts. We're just in a flat rate environment. We're kind of stable to maybe up as we get better loan repricing in the back half of the year. Even if deposit costs kind of start to trend up a little bit. Okay, that's great. Thank you for that clarification. And then on the expense guide, it's helpful to see the next next quarter's expense guide which is still kind of shaking out to about that 5% annual growth rate. But just curious if you still feel like that 5% full-year expense growth guide is appropriate or is there anything that with the recruiting you've talked about or anything else that you think we should be aware of to model in the back half of the year?
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, Ron. Yeah, just high level for me. Kathryn, from the recruiting side, you know, we think we can, we think we can handle some of the recruitment. You know, we don't do, we're not going out and doing really, really large ads. You know, we're just kind of selectively adding the right, right producing team members when they come on board. So yeah, we should be able to absorb that with the increased production. But Ron can talk about guidance, but yeah, I don't think we've got a lot of really heavy expense lift, you know in the, in the forecast going forward. Most of that's already built into Ron. Any, any color on that.
Ron Gorzinski (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, Catherine, we're, we're projecting pretty Much for the rest of the year. Quarter over quarter, we're going to stay within a. Looking to stay within a tight band between 34.5 to 35 million kind of in there. We're not expecting any other, you know, not expecting creep unless something strategic comes along. We're, we're still looking to get our efficiency ratio to trend down to that target 60% level by year end. So you know, the only other item is the variable comp piece that could change some of this if we do get extended production and then variable comp will kick in. But no, we look like we can keep within that band.
Catherine Mehler
Okay, great. Very helpful. Great quarter guys. Thank you.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks Kathryn.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephen Scouten from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Stephen Scouten
Thanks guys. I guess going back to the NIM just for one second, I'm kind of curious what you guys see as the biggest risk to the continued positive trajectory on the NIM, especially in that back half of 26. What could kind of cause that to be different than expected currently?
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
You know Ron, I'll let you take a stab at it. You know, mine's just going to be just competitive pressure on.
Ron Gorzinski (Chief Financial Officer)
On. On really more just money market rates and funding rates. Probably a big driver in the second half is just not knowing exactly where you know, rates are going to come or what kind of pressures we're going to get. Stephen, I still think, you know, rates hold steady. I still think we can do a, do a pretty nice job on the loan yield front. I think it's just going to be more funding cost pressures potentially. Ron, any anything else that you would add to that? No, exactly. It's all going to be in the funding cost and if we do have trending more of our mix shift at a non interest bearing but really those are the only other items.
Stephen Scouten
Okay. And I know you guys noted that more of the growth had come kind of from money market and savings. Were there any sort of specials on the money market rates, anything unusual that led to that kind of material pickup there from a mix shift? I don't think so. I don't think we really did anything. No, we. Especially hard work. Yeah. And really we, we prefer, we prefer selling money, you know selling money markets than CDs. So. But yeah, nothing that we didn't have any, we didn't have any rate promos or anything out. Out of the norm, Stephen. Okay, great. And then just last for me, I guess you guys noted the director of private banking and some wealth management hires there in Nashville, how do you feel about your Nashville presence today? Is that something we continue to see you focus on expanding given the current opportunity set and if so, kind of, you know, what could that look like over the next couple years?
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, it is. You know, we're, as I've said, you know, we're really, we're really just really leaning into a lot all of our zones, you know, we've just got such great ability to grow share in so many of our markets. But obviously Nashville is a big one. It's a big market. We're really starting to build some nice momentum. I was over there with some clients a couple of weeks ago and we've got really good energy over there. Got a couple of, really got some nice team members that we've added over the course of the last couple of years, have got more that we want to add over there. So I think that's a market that's going to be important to us as we go forward. But we've got a lot of other zones where we're growing share too. But Nashville is going to be one that I think has got a heck of an upside for us.
Stephen Scouten
Appreciate it. Pollard, congrats on all the continued progress here.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Moss. From Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Steve Moss
Good morning guys and nice quarter here. Thanks, Dave. Most of my questions have been asked. Welcome. Most of my questions been asked here. Just kind of curious in terms of just the maybe the pipeline mix, you know, is focusing to be more construction, not an off grad cre or just kind of how you guys thinking about how you guys are feeling with that underlying mix.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, I'll let Rhett kind of dive in on pipelines and seeing more of that. But yeah, we've been able to keep it pretty balanced, you know, and pretty agnostic to kind of whatever group. But I think we've been able to hold. I still think we'll be able to hold. But Rhett, do you need any additional color on how you see the loan composition looking over the next Now, Bill, you nailed it.
Rhett Miller
With regard to kind of what our focus is. I mean, clearly look at the graph we've got there. I think it's page nine of the deck that outlines our loan composition. I mean, you might have a slight move here or there, a Percentage point or 2 1/4 to the next, but overall, as you can see, it's maintaining a pretty steady pace as it relates to the mix of the portfolio. When you look at our first quarter production and it really ties in almost exactly to those same, those same metrics for the quarter. So I mean, it's just a continued solid, strong mix across the different segments of the book. And we are focused in doing that. We've got our banker teams kind of set where they have some target areas and specializations here and there. And each one of them are, as Miller pointed out earlier across the geographies and across, across our different markets, each one of them are, are carrying their own, their own weight in the water bucket. So I mean it's. So far it's a, it's been a
Steve Moss
very, a very consistent mix. Okay, appreciate that. And then maybe just in terms of, you know, expansion, Billy was just talking about the Nashville area. Just kind of curious, you know, as you hire teams selectively here or people selectively, you know, should we think about any De Novo expansion around that market or, you know, and any thoughts on M and A these days? I know you guys are seeking to leverage your existing base, but just kind of updated thoughts there.
Billy Carroll (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah. On your first question on De Novo expansion. No, not really. I mean, I think, you know, obviously we, last quarter we talked about, excited to get Columbus, Georgia started. Really excited about what, what our team is starting to build down there and building it really quickly. So I've been happy with that. But outside of that, nothing really. We will look, I think we will probably look to add another Nashville area office sometime here in the foreseeable future. Just maybe a couple other small offices to support some of our markets as we look at over the next couple of years. But nothing really big on that front. Steve. Probably just like I said, focus on that De Novo Columbus zone and then really focus on probably just growing national, maybe add a branch there and maybe another one in another market or two over the next couple of years and still all quiet on the M and A birthday ticket. Oh yeah, in M and A. M and A. I forgot about M and A Miller. And we just, we start laughing, you know, you know, it's, I just, I love. You know, and we have, you know, we've, we've had, we've had, we've been successful in M and A over the years. But, but, but boy, this pivot that we made a few years ago and the leadership that we've been able to put in on the sales side, the organic growth and I think you see it, the results and what it's done, their revenue growth and EPS growth and, and I, I said it'd take a unicorn to probably get us to move ability of the firm now. And just the company and the work ethic. It just. Yeah, what we're doing now is working. Yeah. And so, yeah, probably. Probably a little light on. On prioritizing that, Steve, but. But love where we're sitting.
Steve Moss
Appreciate that and definitely appreciate all the call here. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. And we will pause for any questions to be registered. We currently have no further questions and therefore concludes the Q and A session. I would now like to hand back to Miller Welborn, Chairman of the Board, for any closing remarks.
Miller Welborn (Chairman of the Board)
Thanks, Claire. And I appreciate everybody joining us today. It's great to be with you. All. And as Billy said, it's just an exciting time to be part of this bank and just being constant recruiters, and that's a great team members all across the bank footprint and also just great clients. We just appreciate y' all being part of it. Thank you and have a great day.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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