Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Today's conference call will begin shortly. If you would like to register a question at any time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Hello everybody, and welcome to the Home BancShares (Conway, AR) Announces Acquisition of Mountain Commerce Bancorp Incorporated. My name is Elliot, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question during today's event, please press star one on your telephone keypad. I'd like to hand over to John Allison, Chairman of Home BancShares. Please go ahead. Yes, I'm glad to be here, Brett. Thanks everyone for joining with us today. It's just an exciting day for the history of Home BancShares and for Mountain Commerce. With me today is, of course, Donna Townsell, David Carter, Stephen Tipton, Kevin Hester, and Bill Edwards is with us today. He's the founder of the bank. He's the John Allison of this bank, and we're pleased to have him join us, his group join us. We're excited about the opportunities. You read the quote, I think, "Tennessee, Texas, and Florida are the three best states in the nation," and now we're in the third one. So this will be our base operation coming out of here. Bill will be looking for opportunities, and we'll be helping them with our balance sheet. They'll have the Home BancShares balance sheet to go forward with, so I think that'll be a plus for him and his team. We had a meeting last night with several members of the team. It was a great evening. We spent about three or four hours together. They're a very conservative bank. They're a lot like Home BancShares, so I think it's a good opportunity for Mountain Commerce shareholders as well as Home BancShares shareholders. We're pleased to do the transaction. And we are in Tennessee as you speak. We're in his beautiful office in Knoxville, Tennessee. What's his address? 6101 Kingston Pike. It's a beautiful, beautiful facility, and we're here in the boardroom, and we're going to probably open it up for questions. Stephen, any comments? Anything you want to say this morning? No, glad to be here. I mean, I think we've talked before about when we enter a new market, we're going to do it with some scale and do it with the management team. And I think we're pleased to get to know Bill and Kevin and their team and look forward to working together going forward, so. Kevin, any comments? I'll just echo what you guys said. I think it's a great opportunity for both us and for them, and looking forward to getting started. That's great. Donna, comments? Glad to be in Tennessee and here with Bill. I would also like to remind those on the phone that there is a slide deck on our Home BancShares website with some additional information if you'd like to review that. Just a few comments. This was a triple accretive transaction on EPS, book value per share, and tangible book value per share. Both Mountain Commerce and Home BancShares will start accreting income as soon as the deal closes. It won't be dilutive like a lot of these deals have been done in the past. It's a meaningful entrance into high growth Knoxville, Nashville, and Johnson City, and Mountain Commerce has a long history of strong performance, and we're going to lend our balance sheet. You'll see we've marked the balance sheet, so we think Mountain Commerce will come out strong out of the gate, so it's financially compelling. It's a low-risk transaction. They're about as conservative as we are, and we like that, so as they said earlier, this Mountain Commerce will operate as our base for future expansion in these areas. That'll be up to Bill. Bill's going to run the operation. He's in charge, and when he finds something, we'll take a look at it and see if we can put it together, Bill. Look forward to that. I think, Donna, let's just go to Q&A and kind of get it rolling here, if that's all right. Okay. Elliot, we're ready for questions. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. First question comes from Brett Rabatin with Hovde Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hey. Good morning, everybody. Congratulations on the deal. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. We're excited. Wanting to ask Johnny on this franchise, will you be adding branches? Do they need additional locations to grow? What do you think in terms of organic growth for the franchise, and how do you get there? I'll let Bill answer that. This is his baby. He knows this market inside out, backwards and forwards, and he's our leader here. If he thinks it's appropriate, that's what we'll do. He's going to be driving the bus, and we're excited about him driving it, Bill. Yeah, Brett. I would say, first off, we have a very talented team, and we've been constrained with our deposit growth as well as our capital. And so just our team will have tremendous organic growth with the Home BancShares balance sheet. I think branches will be one consideration, but I think, obviously, additional hires could be in play with the disruption in Tennessee. But I think out of the gate, we don't need much to really turn up the growth engine. Okay. And then my other question was just around the deposit base and your cost of deposits, Bill. I think was a little over 3%. Johnny, you obviously have a pretty low-cost deposit base. Is the cost of deposit an opportunity in Tennessee for you, Bill, or do you think that it's just more competitive than other places, and so it's going to be tough? Just any color on maybe the opportunity to lower the cost of funds from here for the pro forma franchise? Yeah. I think the deposit cost is a little bit misleading in that our customer deposit cost is about 250. We have the wholesale funding that takes the cost up to the 3% number you spoke of. Now, if you look ahead for maturities over the next 12 months- 15 months, many of those reprice lower, obviously lower. Some are in the fives now. And our last MCBI press release calls that out as far as our deposit price, and there's a good schedule that you can see, Brett. But customer deposits, I think we're in line. It's the fact we had to fund the balance sheet with wholesale money. Again, speaking to the ability to grow, we just couldn't fund it. Can I answer your question? Yep. That's helpful, guys. Thanks for the color. Yes, sir. Thank you. We now turn to Matt Olney with Stephens. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hey, thanks. Good morning, and congrats on the deal. I was just looking for more background or history from Johnny as far as just how well you've gotten to know Bill over the years and the team at Mountain Commerce, and just remind us of any background you have of banking in the Tennessee market. Well, we've had an eye on Mountain Commerce for a while and Bill's operation. We didn't move earlier because we had to get our arms around all the Texas stuff that we had. We finally got our arms around the Texas stuff. I told you we were ready to move at that point in time, and this is where we landed right here with Bill. And I visited with him, flew over here, and had lunch with him, and we had a lot of common interests. And we would have been here before because we liked Tennessee, but as a result of the mess we had in Texas, we had to get that. We had to know what we had and got our arms around it. Now we were ready to move, and we moved. This was the first opportunity that looked like it's made. I mean, he runs as conservative an organization as we do. So we have a lot of capital. We fixed his balance sheet. It's already fixed, I guess, once this deal's done. So Stephen, you got a comment? No. I mean, Matt, you asked about some history in Tennessee. I mean, with our platform, both CCFG and just the Community Bank Group, we've done some stuff in Tennessee over the years. We've got an LPO in Memphis today and have done some projects in Nashville and east over time. So it's not unfamiliar to us. And I think Bill may contend, but I think he's followed Home and Johnny and the company for years, and I think he even sat next to Donna 10, 15 years ago at an investor meeting. So I think it goes back a good ways. Yeah. We've obviously had tremendous respect for Johnny and the whole home team and what they built and as I told him, it was kind of must-see TV at investor conferences to listen in, to read the quarterly transcripts, to see if we could adapt anything they may be doing or what their view of the world was, so I mean, it was logical for us when Johnny and I first met that this could be a good partnership. That's how it happened. Matt. Looks like a great combination, and appreciate you taking my question. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. We now turn to Stephen Scouten with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Thanks. I guess I'm kind of curious just kind of maybe Bill can answer a little bit more about Mountain Commerce, just not as familiar with the bank, kind of what really the core focus has been in those markets and how that fits kind of with the home business model at a high level. Sure. We focus on the professional market. I think doctors, lawyers, accountants, private banking-ish, I would say. We try to bank the influencers in the market as well. We're not shy of the real estate piece of the business. All of our bankers have been with us for a long term, and some with me prior to Mountain Commerce when we started the bank. So really just banking those that desire relationship, right? We're not trying to compete with the credit unions and some of those type transaction-oriented entities. And it's been successful over the last 18 years. Great. That's very helpful. And then just kind of from a balance sheet perspective, is there anything from a Home viewpoint that needs to be tweaked or any components that you'd want to pare back from at all? It doesn't sound like it. Sounds like it might be kind of full speed ahead once you get the benefit of the deposits and the capital in those markets. But just curious if I'm hearing that the right way, and we can expect to see kind of faster loan growth from that Mountain Commerce platform right out of the gate. Yeah, I think that's exactly the way I think about it. As Johnny mentioned, I mean, we'll mark the balance sheet, and earnings will kind of lift off from here. And I think the conversations we had last night with Bill and their team are just excited about the $25 billion balance sheet to be able to grow on from here in these markets. He's actually been a little constrained due to his AOCI, and he's had to have some liquidity once in a while. Occasionally. Occasionally, and this will give him some additional liquidity to go with. I think we learned last night at dinner with his team that they're all excited about the opportunities going forward, and they can do much bigger loans and much, much bigger loans, so I mean, Tennessee is a great state. He's got great people. He's got beautiful facilities. It's conservatively run. It just fits us. I mean, he's a founder. By the way, as we go through all this, it'll help the fact that Home BancShares can pay out all uninsured deposits. Uninsured deposits won't hurt the proposition in this market either, so we continue to bring lots of strength to the team, so. Yeah. I would just say that the strength is actually going to be helpful on the deposit gathering. As Johnny says, strength is no accident. And as you open up to larger depositors, municipals or what have you, it's going to be incredibly powerful to have that balance sheet and the core strength, the Centennial, to solicit deposits. And when times get tough, it's even better, right? They're looking for the strong bank. And our team is just being constrained with, again, capital, CRE buckets, and deposits to fund their growth. So this takes the limitations off our team. Appreciate it. Appreciate Appreciate all the color. Glad to see Home BancShares into the state of Tennessee. Thank you. Stephen, Kevin's got something here he's going to say. Oh, Stephen, I was just going to say, talking about CRE, we both have a similar focus on real estate, and we'll give them some room on the construction side and still have a lot of room on the improved property side. So I think we'll have a good fit there, and these markets are really good for that asset class. So we're excited to work with them. Thanks, Stephen. We now turn to Dave Rochester with Cantor. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the deal. Thank you. You mentioned earlier that there's an opportunity to take advantage of disruption in the market, and it seems like that can be a pretty meaningful opportunity just given the recent deal activity. Do you think that could be a real needle mover for you guys now that you have the Home BancShares balance sheet coming to bear there now? And what does that disruption mean for you from both maybe a talent perspective and a banking business perspective? Thanks. Obviously, I'm very optimistic with that. There's a lot of disruption with some of the larger market share players in Tennessee. There are a lot of smaller banks in Tennessee that if you look at fatigued boards and opportunities, and I'm sure our phone will ring about how we thought about this transaction in relationship. But talent, again, when they see the resources that we have from a balance sheet standpoint, I think our phone's going to ring for that as well. And importantly, I think as some of our top producers, their phone will ring. They've all partnered and entered into contracts, which they're excited with the deal. And so I think we've prevented anything leaving the bank. So. We were working on this. The Sonoma-Spinnaker deal is not the reason we did this transaction. We were moving on this truth. We had this transaction in mind for some time, and that just was icing on the cake for us, the disruption that was created in the market. So we think we didn't do it because of that, but if there's good things come out of that, then so be it. Obviously, now having the balance sheet, there's other markets in Tennessee that are really good markets. To answer the earlier question as well, if we identify locations that would be suitable for a new branch, we have the balance sheet to do that. Yeah. Well, how about it from just an inorganic perspective? Would you say, Johnny, would this be your highest priority market for future M&A at this point as you try to get more scale in Tennessee and maybe enter some of those other new markets? Of course, we're always looking for opportunity. You know that we're an opportunistic company, and I'm not going to press that. We don't press our regions. I'm not going to press Bill to go buy another bank tomorrow. But if he finds one tomorrow, by the way, somebody's already sent us one down this morning. So I think we announced the deal, and 30 minutes later, she gets the lead on the bank. So it'll be up to Bill. We don't force that on. I don't know Tennessee as well as Bill does. We'll let him call that shot. If he finds something, we'll be there right beside him to help him do it. So that's our game plan. When you got guys' experience. I know you're going to be taking. Pardon? Oh, no, go ahead. Sorry. Let me interrupt. If you got a man that's as experienced as he has in Tennessee and knows the market and further east from here, then I think that he's the guy that needs to look at it and call the shots, so that's kind of how we run our deal. We got 16 regions, and they all report upstream, and those guys run their regions. They know the regions, and they run it, so that's a plus for us, and having a man of his experience come in, we're blessed to have it, so we look forward to working with him and following his guidance. Yep. Sounds good. Maybe just one last one. I know you're going to take the normal care with closing and integrating the transaction, but I was just curious if you'd be open to announcing others before you actually close the deal earlier next year? Yes. To answer that, yes. If it's something Bill likes and brings to us, we'd be open to that. If it's in another market where we already are located, we'd be open to that. So I mean, we've got a couple right now that are out there. I think you could do another one. This one surely will close in 90 days or so. And while that's happening, we'll be working on something somewhere else maybe unless Bill brings us something from his Tennessee or east of here. So we're open to that. We have a war chest of capital, as you know, or a fortress balance sheet. So this was a perfect. We used some of our capital here to help mark his balance sheet and get it cleaned up, ready to roll. And that's what we plan to do. That's one of the reasons we carry so much capital. As you know, we'll err with too much capital and too much reserves, but when you need it, you need it. And when you need it, and a lot of times you can't get it. When you're forced to go for it, you can't get it. So we sit pretty nice. You've seen our balance sheet. We got lots of capital. So we pride ourselves with that, Dave. Yep. All sounds good. Thank you very much, guys. Congrats again. Thank you. As another reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one now. We now turn to Catherine Mealor with KBW. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning and congrats. Good morning. Just one follow-up on the capital conversation. You've got a ton of capital, and obviously, deals have been a piece of the story there. But you've also been actively repurchasing shares. And so I guess my question is, even with this deal pending, do you think you'll still plan to be actively repurchasing stock? Or is kind of M&A going to shift to more of a use of capital proceeds over the next few quarters? Thanks. Well, wherever they put it on sale, we'll buy it. So we hadn't changed from that stance at all. And I don't know, Stephen, you got to, I don't know. We both. I agree. We've been active this quarter, kind of similar amount to where we were in Q3. But to Johnny's point, I mean, we watch it every day and are active when it's on sale. The good news is when you run a 2% ROA, you can buy back stock, and you can grow tangible common equity, and you can increase your dividends. If you're running 1%, you only do half of what we do. When you run a 2%, you can double up on that. Having a company that generates those kind of return on assets gives us the ability to pull every capital handle out there and pull it as hard as you want to pull it too, Catherine. You know that. That's right. That's right. All right, great. Yeah. We'll leave that back to the model then. Great. Thank you so much and congrats on the deal. Glad to see it. Thank you. Appreciate it. We now turn to Brian Martin with Janney Montgomery Scott. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, guys. Congratulations on the transaction. Thanks, Brian. Hey, just wanted to ask one follow-up in that it's just in terms of your outlook and just in terms of organic growth and how to scale the Tennessee markets. With Mountain being in three different markets in Tennessee, can you just talk about the opportunity to scale over time? Where do you think the market, how much scale you can get in each market and just how you're thinking about the priorities there as you move forward? Thank you. Well, I mean, it's all about timing, right, Brian? How fast can you do what? Obviously, the Nashville, South Nashville market in Williamson County is extremely large, one of the best counties in MSA and in the U.S. But I think the point that a lot of folks don't appreciate is Knoxville is a very good market as far as moving into this area. It really depends on whether we go after it from organic growth or from talent acquisition, or we're able to find another franchise that fits the culture and parameters that Johnny and Stephen would have. You know what? In a world of, Brian, in a world of three, four, five, six, seven, 10-year dilution, all we got to do is keep our nose clean and be above ground and do what we need to do in this market. So we think we found the right partner to do it with, and they chose us, and we chose them. So we have a common goal here to build the company. Bill will be a large shareholder, which is a plus for us. He's an owner-operator like I've been, and we've been in this company for years, and it's a perfect fit, and we just hit it off. I mean, we see things a lot alike. You can say what you want to about a founder, but the founder, it's just different how he looks at it. Having somebody that reels his numbers off, he doesn't have to have a notepad. He tells it like it is, and he knows his numbers. He's got them. Like we know our numbers. That's extremely impressive to me from my side to see somebody, a founder, number one, and somebody who knows is actively involved in the bank and leading the bank, and he's got really good people, so. I didn't know if that was the police coming to get us. It's not. It's the firefighters. We just escaped one more time. Well, it sounds like there's a lot of runway for future growth, and it sounds like a great combination, guys. So thanks for taking the question, and congratulations again. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. We now turn to Jon Arfstrom with RBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Jon, your line is open. We lose you, Arfstrom. Are you on mute? We have no further questions. I'll now hand back to the management team for any final remarks. Again, I said it earlier, we're excited to be in Tennessee with Bill and his team today, and we look forward to working with them and their guidance. We're going to go back to Arkansas today. He's got work to do, and we got work to do when we get back to Arkansas. So first, we want to thank everybody for joining us today, tell you how much we appreciate it. Any final remarks? Stephen, you good? Yeah. No, I'm good. I'm good. Glad to be here and looking forward to getting this thing closed as quickly as possible and get to work. Likewise. We are excited, but we're still going to wear red. Yes. Yeah. We're going to have to get some. We'll wear some orange as well. We'll have to get an orange shirt somewhere. Maybe we can get Bill to put one with his name on it somewhere and send it to him. That's a must-have. Rocky top. Yeah, Rocky top. But from the MCB side, look, it couldn't be a better partnership with shared principles and cultures. And we've had a chance to meet many of the executive management team, and it's just a good fit culturally too. And that's what makes these deals work, is the willingness to work together. And I think we all know that Tennessee is a great market, and they're hitting the ground with a very talented team that's thoroughly excited. Donna, you got to wrap it up? Final comments? I think that's all we have, Elliot. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We're done, Elliot. Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Today's call is now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect from.