Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Bank OZK third quarter two thousand twenty-four earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jay Staley, MD, Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead. Good morning. I'm Jay Staley, Managing Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development for Bank OZK. Thank you for joining our call this morning and participating in our question-and-answer session. In today's Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements about our expectations, estimates, and outlook for the future. Please refer to our earnings release, management comments, and other public filings for more information on the various factors and risks that may cause actual results or outcomes to vary from those projected in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Joining me on the call to take your questions are George Gleason, Chairman and CEO, Brannon Hamblin, President, Tim Hicks, Chief Financial Officer, Cindy Wolfe, Chief Operating Officer, and Jake Munn, President, Corporate and Institutional Banking. We will now open up the lines for your questions. Let me ask our operator, Marvin, to remind our listeners how to queue in for questions. Thank you. It is time to conduct the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. Wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Our first question comes from the line of Stephen Scouten of Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning, everyone. Appreciate all the guidance in the management comments, especially the potential for NIM inflection in late 2025, I think was interesting. I'm hoping you might be able to give some color on kind of the puts and takes. Obviously, a lot going on there. Maybe talk up a little bit about the CD yields on repricing and beta expectations on the way down, kind of the impact of the floors and that lag effect you talk about on ten one. And then sort of the potential drag on the NIM from the handoff of RESG to CIB and the other verticals. Just, you know, that coupled with any debt maturity, just that holistic picture of the puts and takes around the NIM and what gives you confidence around that potential for inflection in the back half of twenty-five? Tim, since Stephen's question touches everything on the balance sheet and income statement, would you like to take that? Sure. Thanks, Stephen. How are you doing? Great. Thank you. Great. Yeah, I mean, a lot of different variables happening. Obviously, the pace of Fed moves is a big component on the timing of and the magnitude of the changes in our NIM. The floors, we gave you a good schedule on our floors when those are expected to be impacting our loan yields, and those are on figure 27, and then really, the pace of the cost of interest-bearing deposits and how quickly we can reprice those, you can see that on page 24, figure 26. A big component of that is gonna be our time deposit and the maturity schedule there. You can see $5.9 billion of time deposits repricing this quarter. That weighted average rate there is 5.19, and you can see $6.2 billion in Q1, weighted average rate of 5.10. So that's a big component. Currently, our current special is well below that 7-month CD at 4.60, 13-month CD at 4.25. So as those come over and reprice, we've got a good opportunity to move down deposit costs pretty quickly over the next two quarters. And then we mentioned our securities portfolio having a pretty good impact of cash flow coming in in Q1 and in early Q4 and a little bit in Q1, with a good amount of cash flow that's gonna be re-priced at higher yields, too. So a lot of different moving parts, the Fed moving, how quickly they move really is dependent, will depend on really the pace of our, the impact of our NIM on the way down and the inflection point and, hopefully, a good result in the back half of next year. I mean, our Fed assumptions assume 25 basis points decline for the next six meetings. So if the Fed moves slower than that, then that's a good situation for us. If the Fed moves a quicker pace, then that's more headwinds for us. If they move even later into the back half of 2025, you know, we'll have more of our floors at more of our loans at their floors. We'll have more opportunity to reprice our CDs even more at that point. So that's not a bad situation for us either. So we feel like our guidance we've given is pretty good in a lot of different scenarios. Perfect. Very comprehensive, answer to a comprehensive question. Thanks. Yeah, let me add a little color to that, and Tim, make sure you agree with this, that I'm thinking right. You know, the assumption, our base case assumption is that our margin will be under pressure in Q4 and Q1, because of the twenty-five basis point decreases in each meeting and the fact that- deposits will reprice, but loans will reprice faster. We saw the benefit of that on the way up. We'll catch the headwind of that on the way down. If the Fed were to move fifties in fifty chunks, that would be more impactful in a negative sort of way on Q4, but we would reach the floors much more quickly, so we would hit the inflection point, and then would start improving more quickly next year. So that's a point that needs to be understood, because those floors are going to begin to kick in, you know, pretty quick here with another couple of Fed moves, and Tim referenced you to that chart. But that will lead us to an inflection point when we start catching a lot of those floors. Perfect. Perfect. Great. And it seems as though you guys feel a little bit more confident around this handoff strategy and the ability to grow loans nicely. I think you said mid to high single digits in 2025, which is great. And I like that you have Jake here on the call. So can you talk a little bit about that handoff, the confidence, and maybe the incremental investments, if you can frame those up within CIB from a headcount perspective, that gives you that level of confidence? Yeah. Why don't we start out and let Brannon Hamblen talk about the overall expectations for loan growth, and then he can introduce Jake, and Jake can comment on some CIB specifics. Yeah, absolutely. Good morning, guys. Great to be on with you. Yeah, a lot of moving parts as we look forward in respect to loan growth. Obviously, I mean, RESG has had coming off 2022 $13.8 billion in originations, has had a lot of funding that sustained a great growth trajectory. But as we move forward, we all know that those construction loans complete and that level of originations will start to turn back around in terms of repayments, and you've still got some deferred payments from sort of the COVID era loans as well. We've had great progress from RESG, but that'll start turning its way around. It's chunky. It's not, you know, easy to be spot on with when some of these moves occur. But we've got, you know, a great asset management team. I know we've said it many times, those guys have, on average, about 15 loans apiece. They spend a lot of time focused on the projects, and a really important part of that is forecasting those funding and repayment forecast, 36-month forecast that we do every single month. So, we do a really good job of focusing on accuracy there. But based on, you know, based on what we see, we know that the RESG will be coming back the other way, and we're extremely excited to have Jake and his team on board. I'll obviously let Jake talk about what they've done there, but I've spent a lot of my time this year, sort of assisting Jake get that team up and running. And it's, you know, when we came into the year, we probably had, I don't know, 10 or 15 folks in that group. And he's been working hard and fast to expand that by a factor of three. I think he's close to mid-forties now in terms of employees. So the timing, we think we have really nailed pretty perfectly. And he's. I'll turn it over to him to let him talk about what he's seeing there and what opportunity he has to take the baton, as we've said, from RESG. Thanks, Brandon. I appreciate it, and a great question. You know, the CIB was formed in March of this year, and really, most of it came to fruition just last quarter with the launch of our Corporate Banking and Sponsor Finance group, as well as our Loan Syndications and Corporate Services group. And so what you're seeing in the third quarter numbers is really just, you know, in a sense, a teaser for what's to come. We feel confident. We have great pipelines as it relates to our legacy Asset-Based Lending group. We provide additional staffing there on the origination side to really help propel growth there. In addition to that, our Equipment Finance and Capital Solutions team is really on a roll. You know, we provided additional portfolio management and operational support over the last quarter there, too, to free them up from some of the administrative oversight, so they could really focus again on building up a nice pipeline of opportunities for the future. And then finally, our Fund Finance group underneath the CIB as well is really off to a great start. We have a new leader in from a nice institution, who's come in and rolled up her sleeves and is really adding to the overall growth profile there. So we're excited about what's to come, optimistic and feel good about it. Fantastic. And, and if I could squeeze in one quick one on a kind of an accounting question. Can you give any color on what causes the, the transfer of, like, a construction loan into maybe a more permanent CRE classification? Is that, like, when you reach a CO or, or kind of what drives that classification change? And does that change how you guys have to evaluate the loan from a rating perspective internally? Brannon, do you got that? Yeah, Stephen, I'll take that. It's really a very simple two criteria that make that move. A, the property is complete and has a certificate of occupancy, and B, the loan structure includes within it a monthly amortizing feature. With respect to the second part of that question, does it change how we look at it or rate it? You know, we are constantly reevaluating our risk ratings on a quarterly basis, so nothing really changes there. We, you know, we're taking into account before it's complete, what's gonna happen, you know, after it's complete, what leasing has occurred, what we expect to occur, valuations, all those sorts of things. So not really a big change there. Got it. Thanks for all the color, and congrats on more record earnings. Yeah, Steve, I want to give a little additional color on this handoff, in addition to what Brannon and Jake said. A couple of things. You know, while our corporate and institutional banking group under Jake's leadership is new, and he has tripled plus the size of the team there, over the course of this year, and really brought in veteran, high quality, very experienced, very talented people. He is also building on something that is three, four, and five years old in our company. Our fund finance business, our asset-based lending business, and our equipment finance and capital solutions businesses have been here three, four, or five years each. And all those team members are staying, and those are businesses we built and proved up, and now Jake and his team, you know, are taking those, integrating them, expanding them, adding more talent. But all of our existing team members that were here at the beginning of the year are still here because they're great team members. They're doing a great job. So we're adding strength on top of strength there. And the second thing that we need to cover in regard to this handoff is that, you know, it's not just corporate and institutional banking. Alan Jessup, Ken Roniker, Dennis Poor, the guys who are doing our commercial bank lending through our community bank structure, that includes all sorts of different types of lending, and Dennis Poor over the indirect lending and the consumer lending business. Those guys are likewise really stepping up their game. And again, we've been building the infrastructure for that step up and for this handoff for a couple of years. So it's a broad-based deal with broad-based contribution from CIB, indirect lending, commercial banking, and, you know, an increased emphasis on small business, business banking, consumer lending through our branch network as well. We are feeling really good about it, and as Brannon accurately said, we think we've got the timing of this just right, that just as we're at the point where RESG funded balances are probably gonna, you know, be more or less flat through year-end next year, and that'll vary quite a bit from quarter to quarter. More or less flat, we're still projecting mid to high single-digit growth because of the contribution from all these other business units that, you know, are getting a new emphasis, but certainly not new to our company. Thanks for all the incremental color, George. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Manan Gosalia of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning. Good morning. I was just trying to think through the relationship between pay downs and floors and, you know, the impact it might have on NIM. You know, as capital markets open up, more loans get paid down, is it more likely that some of the older loans that were made with lower floors get paid down first, or that some of the more recent loans that were made with higher floors get paid down sooner, right? So, you know, I recognize that there's a prepayment penalty, but at some point, you know, with 200 basis points of Fed rate cuts, does it become NPV positive for some of the people that have higher floors to pay down the loan and pay the prepayment penalty? That's a good question and certainly a possibility, Manan. But what I would tell you is that our experience, and Brannon may want to comment on this, but our experience is that, you know, customers have some degree of reluctance. It's not unprecedented and certainly not unheard of or impossible, but there's a degree of reluctance and, you know, inertia for customers to not pay off loans mid-construction. Typically, where you get an early payoff that generates some minimum interest on that credit is, you know, at the time that you've got the building substantially complete and so forth. So most of these things will go to a full completion term, and if they don't go to the point that we would earn our target minimum return on equity, we'll be protected by minimum interest. So that would actually be very favorable from a yield point of view. And I think your first part of that question relating to older loans with lower floors. Yes, our expectation is that we'll have a higher level of older loans with lower floors pay off as opposed to newer loans with higher floors. Got it. So as is, Figure 27 is a good metric to look at, you know, as rates come down, you know, what portion of your loans will hold at their floors? And you know, we can use that to model out NIM going forward. Yes. Got it. And in that chart, I know it's based on commitments, but it should be pretty similar for loans that are actually on the balance sheet? The loans on the balance sheet, because they are the older loans, probably have lower floors than the commitments on average. Got it. Okay, perfect. And then, you know, separately, you know, I saw you launched a new loan syndications desk and reduced the hold limit. Would you consider reducing the hold limit further in the future? Or, you know, even if you don't reduce the aggregate hold level, does this give you the opportunity to be a little bit more flexible syndicating smaller loans in the future? We have no plans or thoughts or discussions about reducing the whole limit further, and you know, have not had any discussions about syndicating any of our RESG loans that are smaller than that. This simply reflects the fact that, you know, as we've talked about extensively for a number of quarters and actually a couple of years now, you know, we're focused on more diversification within the portfolio, and less concentration risk. Obviously, you know, when you've got a big credit out there, it creates an environment where people can make that a target and, you know, spin a story that may have had no foundation and basis, in fact, may not be completely accurate, but still create a lot of drama about a single credit. And we just decided that wasn't worth the headache of having to deal with that sort of crap, honestly. You know, we've only had five loans in our history that were above $500 million. We only have two now. We've grandfathered those two. It's not gonna be a material impact on our business to do that, and actually probably opens up the door for us to do more loans. You know, there are loans that we have passed on in the past that were too big for our whole limit, that would now be in the strike zone for us to syndicate. So I may let you know our syndications desk, our capital markets desk, is part of our Corporate and Institutional Banking group, and it's a new part of that. Jake, if you would, take just a minute and give a few sentences on what that desk is and what else it does other than potentially syndicating RESG loans. Right. I appreciate that, George, and good call, good question. You know, the loan syndications group and the desk falls underneath loan syndications and corporate services within the CIB, which is a relatively new business line, and candidly, something we're very excited about. Our loan syndications desk is fully functional. This allows the bank to now serve as admin agent and lead opportunities. And as you all know, with leading and participating opportunities, results in additional typically fee income and potentially, spread skimming on multi-bank deals. And so we view it as an overall benefit. It allows us to, George's point, have more levers to pull, so we can chase larger deals if we want to, and then sell them down in a very, you know, credit-minded way, as well as pursue more syndicated opportunities across the bank as needed. Aside from the syndications desk that I mentioned, and again, all this rolls up to Tim Newhouse within our LSCS, we've also launched an interest rate hedging desk. So the bank has historically pushed off all of our hedging opportunities, whether those are caps or swaps or other derivative instruments, to a third party. We now have the opportunity and the abilities and capabilities to handle those in-house, through a desk that we've stood up. That, combined with our addition of permanent placement solutions, where we can now assist our real estate clients in accessing other sources of capital when they decided to go permanent, so placing those with institutionals, with REITs, et cetera. Those expanded capabilities under LSCS, we're very excited about. We view it to be again a step in the right direction for diversification for the bank. It allows us to chase additional clients, but it also allows us to keep our eye on, over time, continuing to improve our additional fee income for the institution. Excited about it and what Tim Newhouse and his team has brought to the bank for us. Thanks, Jake. Great. I appreciate it, holistic response. Thank you. Of course. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Olney of Stephens. Your line is now open. Hey, thanks for taking the question. Want to ask about credit quality, and I guess specifically the Chicagoland loan that drove the higher charge-off in the quarter. I I think you've been waiting on that sponsor to recap the project. So just any more color on these efforts that ultimately drove the action to charge down a portion of the loan and move the remaining portion to the nonaccruals? Yeah, good question, Matt, and thank you, and our sponsor there continues to be very actively engaged, and we're in discussions with them now about putting up additional reserves to continue to give them time to work that. Those discussions are ongoing, and that's all I'm gonna say about them at this time, but we're growing less patient with the progress that our sponsor is making, and just given the fact that the progress has been slow, despite the sponsor's, you know, serious and hard work toward accomplishing it, and they are making progress, but just not as much progress. We had expected to have something resolved on that by the end of the third quarter. When they didn't get to a resolution, even though they're continuing working, we just decided the prudent thing was to write it down, given the elevated appraised value on it at that time, and take a write-down. We had the reserve built for it, and you know, we've still got a sizable reserve on it. And all that, the current reserve plus the charge-down we took are about equal to the reserve we had on it last quarter. It's really not a big move as far as our allocation for this credit. It just simply seemed like it was time to recognize the slow pace of that progress by putting it on nonaccrual. You know, you ask about asset quality. I would tell you, we view the quarter as a very positive quarter of asset quality improvement. Our large piece of OREO out in Los Angeles, you know, the sponsor for the third consecutive quarter paid a $1 million fee to extend their contract, put up another $1 million. They've now got $3 million in hard earnest money up on that contract. The reports we're getting on that is they're making great progress and, you know, moving through all the city entitlement, redesign, so forth, related to that project. Every quarter, when they put up another million-dollar fee, that doesn't apply to the purchase price, and put up another $1 million nonrefundable earnest money that does, our assessment of the likelihood of that transaction closing and that loan paying or that property paying off next year is, it increases. The sponsor on our Arts District, Los Angeles building that we put, I think, in the second quarter on nonaccrual, or maybe first quarter, and charged down $9.3 million. That sponsor continued to pay, so we got close to $1 million in additional paydowns last quarter on that. We're not going to get additional paydowns on that, I don't think, except the sponsor has continued to stay with this and has the project sold under contract at a price that would fully pay off our current loan balance and provide a substantial recovery, and possibly a full recovery, of the $9.3 million write-off we previously took on that back in Q2. So we view that contract as significant progress. You know, I tell you, this tells you a lot about our portfolio. This sponsor's equity in this project is gone. The sponsor has made the last payments that they're obligated to make under the transaction, which they made in the last quarter, and yet they are staying engaged to successfully sell the property in a transaction that, you know, essentially pays off our loan, the principal part of our loan and so forth. And the sponsor is not gonna get anything out of this, but they're doing this because it's the right thing to do, and they're people of integrity and so forth. So that just tells you a lot about many of the sponsors we've got in our portfolio. The three other classified loans that are in the RESG portfolio all had payments and progress on them, or additional reserves posted and so forth. So we thought it was a very positive quarter on the asset quality front. Okay, great. Thanks for the color on all the RESG credit details there. I guess, switching gears on the loan pricing, I think it was maybe alluded to earlier, but just looking for more color as far as how the loan pricing at RESG compares to the CIB loans. I know there are several segments that roll up into CIB, but just take a kind of a weighted average within CIB. I'm curious how these spreads compare to the RESG spreads. The loan pricing in RESG, and we've talked about this a number of times, is our RESG loan spreads are going to be higher in the vast majority of cases than the pricing in our Corporate and Institutional Banking Group loans. But with that said, our CIB loans come with treasury fee opportunities, collateral inspection fee opportunities, unused fee capabilities, and there are various other fees and benefits, including deposits and other cross-sell opportunities that come with those CIB loans. So when you look at the required capital allocations for the different loans, I think your return on equity numbers are not materially different between RESG and CIB. You know, our RESG loans require us to hold some ambiguous amount of additional capital because of our CRE concentration. We obviously, on our CIB loans, can be more capital efficient, as well as taking advantage of the deposit opportunities that are more prevalent and significant with the CIB loans and the other fee and cross-sell opportunities that are more significant. So net-net, I think you're coming out to about the same return on equity on those lines of business, if you properly run both of them as we expect to do. Thanks for taking the questions. All right. Thank you. Thank you. One moment for our next question. The next question comes from the line of Catherine Mealor of KBW. Your line is now open. Thanks. Good morning. Good morning. I noticed in your loan outstanding chart, there was a shift out of construction and land development and into the non-farm non-residential, more than we've seen in past quarters. Just curious, what drove that shift? It was just a reclass, or if there's any kind of change going on in there? Brannon, you want to take that one? Sure. Sure, Catherine. As we said earlier, there are really two criteria for moving from construction, you know, or moving out of the construction category. One is projects complete and has a certificate of occupancy, and the loan structure includes a monthly amortizing feature. And so we talked about, you know, the significant originations back in 2022 and before, and those are starting to move through the completion process. Okay, great. So that wasn't a reclass, that was just the natural process of those loans moving? Correct. And then would those be the loans that you could, in theory, think would be at higher risk of paying down as rates continue to go down? Yeah, I would, I would say that's certainly true. As I mentioned earlier, in response to a previous question, it's not unprecedented for a loan to pay off mid-construction, but the normal mindset of sponsors is to look at bridge or refinancing opportunities when a project is completed. So I think you're thinking about that correctly. As these mature and migrate from an active construction to a post-construction phase, and particularly as amortizing payments kick in, you know, those are things that promote a sponsor to look at their opportunities to refi that. As you examine the loans that are moved into that CRE bucket, out of construction, is there more of an emphasis on kind of a cash flow analysis versus just LTVs, in terms of as you're looking at risk rating? Well, I mean- Or is the analysis the same? The analysis, I mean, obviously changes, evolves. I don't know that, you know, that, say, it drops off a cliff. But there's an evolution in your analysis, because obviously once you get post-construction, there's a greater, emphasis and focus on what are their sales doing, or what is their leasing doing, and what's going on in the, in the market. So those are all factors that go into our assessment of risk rating. That's not singularly the factor, though, as we've talked about in previous calls. Just because a project is not leasing as quickly as we thought, doesn't mean it's a problem project. It could be a problem project if the commitment of the sponsor to support the project is not there. But, you know, we gave you some significant data points on the history of, you know, our sponsors putting additional money into projects, paying for extensions, renewals, rebalancing reserves, making principal paydowns, and so forth, on page 12 of our management comments document. And sponsor support is the critical thing that, you know, really drives our determination. If we're absolutely confident that our sponsors are gonna defend their asset and carry that asset through an extended leasing time, then that's just not a problem credit. It's unfortunate for the sponsor, and it costs them money, but it doesn't become a problem for us, and certainly we've seen tremendous support from our sponsors on their projects. Okay, great. And if I could do one follow-up on just your bubble chart. You added some disclosures on your special mention loans, and I know that there you showed there's four in the special mention category. There's that one line- three of them are pretty easy to see in the bubble chart. There's one that points to kind of the massive bubble, so it's hard to see kind of the type of credit and the size. But it would seem that that would be a fairly large credit. Is there any kind of color or kind of indication you can give us to what kind of size and type of credit that might be? You know, Catherine, I'm not gonna talk about the special mention credits. They're not problem credits, you know, as you and I had a conversation, I think, about three months ago on this subject. And as I told you then, our special mention credits we don't view as problem credits. And when we talk about credits, you know, that's an unfair invasion of our customers' privacy and so forth. So we give extreme details on our substandard credits. And I you know, I think we're very transparent about everything going on in the portfolio and give a lot of information. You've got to draw the line someplace, and getting into detailed information on those substandard credits is just not fair and appropriate for our customers. I understand. I thought with adding figure thirty-one, you know, you may be more open to giving us a little bit more disclosure on it. I think it. And again, we don't need to know where it is or anything, just, I think the size and maybe what type of credit would be helpful, just because you can't really tell in the bubble chart. We've given you I appreciate, but you know. Yeah, we've given you, because we got some questions about it, last quarter, we've given you the Appendix B information that gives you property types and the breakdown of the portfolio between pass, special mention, and substandard. This is data that's previously been in our 10-Q and annual report. But we had some questions about it, so we went ahead and put that in Appendix B. That's on page 43 of the management comments. So I think you've got the information you need on that page as to the breakdown of special mention credits. Oh, I see that. All right. Okay, that's helpful. Yep, I see that now. Yeah. Thank you, George. I think that gets to what you're looking at, looking for. Yep, it definitely does. It does. Okay. I'll miss Appendix B. Thank you for that. All right, that's all I got. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. We'll wait for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Rose of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning, everyone. Excuse me. Thanks for taking my questions. Just on the CIB build-out, is there any sort of deposit opportunity there? I assume that there would be. And you know, maybe if you could quantify what you'd expect that to be, you know, kind of over time. And I know it's going to depend on, you know, different types of loans, verticals, things like that. But any way to kind of think about that or size it? Thanks. The answer, Michael, is yes, and I'm going to ask Jake Munn if he would provide a little color on that and how they are thinking about that and approaching that. So Jake, you up to another question? I'm up for it. I appreciate it, George, and good question at that. You know, if we look across the CIB, there's obviously certain verticals that are going to be more deposit rich than others, just given the inherent nature of what they do and the customers they provide. If we're looking at working capital-intensive customers that we'd find underneath Mike Scheff's ABL team, for instance, we would anticipate, you know, smaller deposits there simply because they typically are on sweeps, right? And so there's paydowns to their associated debt on a recurring basis. If we look across the board to equipment finance and capital solutions, which Jim Lyons runs out of Little Rock and does a fantastic job at, we do see a healthy amount of deposits there, and Jim and his team continue to push hard to generate additional opportunities as it relates there. As it relates to our newest vertical, though, our corporate banking and sponsor finance, that's where you're going to see a good amount of depository growth. These are bread and butter C&I clients located across our footprint and associated with our footprint, public companies, private companies, sponsor-backed companies, and it's a mix of both asset-based type lending as well as enterprise value lending. With this vertical that's coming online, you all are just getting a little bit of a taste of initially. We also anticipate great growth kind of in the similar footprints of ABLG and EFCS. That vertical typically has a little bit better yield to answer someone's prior question. We typically see spreads of 50-100 basis points in excess of the other verticals that I mentioned, which is nice. In addition to that, these are typically companies that are very low levered. They have a little bit more cash on their balance sheet, and OZK has a fantastic treasury management platform underneath Mr. Jessup. As a result, we're starting to see a lift in deposits within the CIB. You know, these verticals are not necessarily intended to ever be a one-to-one, you know, self-funded vertical by any means. But we're starting to see some steady lift there. And over time, for instance, within CBSF, I would foresee tracking closer to a 30% self-funded ratio with that business line as they continue to come online and build out. ... That's a great color. Very, very helpful. I appreciate it. Just as a follow-up, you know, as you guys do kind of, you know, shift the loan book, and, you know, I think the target is to get RESG to about 50% of total loans over the next couple of years. Can you just talk about, you know, what that could potentially mean from a credit standpoint? You know, obviously, other verticals are gonna have, and other silos are gonna have higher kind of default frequency and severity versus what we've seen with RESG, which is really just a handful of losses over a very long period of time. Is there a way to kind of think about that? Obviously, the economy is in a good spot, but, you know, I would think some of those other verticals would be a little bit more economically sensitive. And given the shifting mix, you know, could we expect to see a little bit higher, just kind of run rate, just generally speaking of nonperformers and charge-offs, as we move forward? Thanks. Yeah, Michael, I appreciate the fact that you mentioned and acknowledged the outstanding long-term history of our RESG portfolio quality. You know, as you look back over the years, RESG has had a lower net charge-off percentage than any of our other verticals in almost every period since we went active with RESG back in 2003. So it is a great track record, and it certainly contributed to our consistent below average below industry average charge-off ratios every year. So I think you're right in that other business lines will have a somewhat higher net charge-off ratio, and that's true of all other business lines within OZK, not just the CIB group. With that said, you know, each of the guys that has come on board and Jake mentioned, Jim Lyons and Mike Scheff, who run a couple of those units and have run them for several years for us. These guys were attracted to OZK, and we were attracted to them because they share that same philosophical bent on high credit quality. Credit quality is paramount, profitability is secondary, and growth is tertiary sort of mindset that is just at the core DNA of Bank OZK. I think the net charge-off ratios that we'll experience from each of those units that we're building in corporate and institutional banking, and the same philosophy runs through Alan Jessup and Ken Roniker and Dennis Poor's business units in commercial banking and ILD. I think that same commitment to excellence and asset quality and making that priority number one, profitability priority number two, and growth is totally a tertiary consideration, means that you just don't do things that don't meet your credit standards. That discipline is why, over our twenty-seven years as a public company, we've beat the industry's charge-off ratio every year, averaged just about a third of the industry's charge-off ratio. If RESG is 50% of the book, as opposed to 64% of the book, yeah, charge-offs may be a couple of basis points higher, but that fundamental culture of asset quality is always paramount, always the focus, should continue to keep us at roughly, you know, a third of the industry's charge-off average. That's our, that's our goal, and that's our expectation. Real quick, to echo George's sentiment there, specifically to the CIB. If you look at the types of opportunities that we're pursuing, you know, it's really relationship focused, and that's where we're getting the yield and the cross-sell he mentioned, but it's also relationship focused in a very similar light to RESG, where we understand management's visions, we understand the underlying sponsors. We've looked at these deals, we understand them. We're not chasing exotic sectors. We're being very picky and choosing our plays, if you will, of what industries we want to dive into, that have better risk profiles, that suit OZK's credit-first philosophy. In addition to that, if you look at our ABL lending, for instance, a lot of institutions out there, their ABL book is chock-full of distressed assets or quasi-distressed assets. That's not the case for our ABL group. We focus on high quality, larger scale ABL deals, where they are not distressed ABL. Same can be said for our CBSF. If you were to look at the leverage points on those opportunities we're pursuing, or the LTVs or LTEVs, I should say, for our enterprise value deals, we have not onboarded any leverage loans to that group, and we don't intend to do so either, and so lower leverage points, better quality sponsors, and we're picking our plays. That's very helpful. I appreciate the detailed answer. I'll step back. Thanks. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Martin of Janney. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning, everyone. Good morning, Brian. Hey, George, just a follow-up to maybe a last question. I guess, just kind of as you look at this handoff from RESG to CIB, I guess how to think about. You started, I guess, you've covered some of it on just how to think about provisioning, you know, as you kind of go into those different business units, given your comments about you know, how good or how well the performance has been of RESG over the years, you know, relative to CIB, which certainly sounds like, you know, from what Jake just said, you know, pretty high-quality relationship, low leverage. So maybe not a lot of difference in how we think about the provisioning, you know, given kind of comments that have been made? Brian, that's a great question, and you know, we'll run models on every loan, and we run those models through our various macroeconomic models and our scenario selection for that, and calculate an appropriate ACL for every loan in the portfolio as a whole every quarter, so you know, we will continue to do that. And, you know, if that obviously in the current environment where our commercial real estate customers are feeling, you know, stress from the higher level of interest rates that have endured over the last couple of years, particularly the last year, for those customers, we've got higher reserve allocations, higher ACL allocations for our commercial real estate loans now than we've had historically because it's a more challenging environment for our sponsors. And that's reflected in the fact that, you know, we've nearly doubled our ACL over the last nine quarters from $300 million to just almost $600 million. So I would expect as rates decline and that stress abates in our commercial real estate, that will tend to free up some of the reserve allocations for some of those loans. And you know, we'll put appropriate reserve allocations up for the CIB loans based on a loan-by-loan, quarter-by-quarter analysis of the quality and condition of those loans and the macroeconomic environment in which we are operating. Will those reserves be higher than our historical RESG reserves in normal non-stress times? You know, I don't know the answer to that. I think that just depends on those individual credits and how they perform. So, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a modestly higher level of ACL reserve associated with those loans long term than our RESG loans, where we have, you know, very hard, clear-cut, collateral, backing for those loans that, you know, is a little easier to understand than a complex enterprise value or, you know, more transitory asset base for those loans. But we're structuring them well. We're structuring them very cautiously and conservatively with the same sort of structures and the same sort of approach to credit quality in our CIB business that we have applied to get the good results in RESG. So, you know, I don't think there's gonna be a material difference in that. It may be a little difference, but not a material difference. Gotcha. Okay. I appreciate the color and, you know, maybe just two other quick ones here. Just in terms of the scaling and the build-out of CIB, if you kind of talk about a roadmap of, you know, three to five years, kind of where you see this business, you know, contributing to OZK, can you give a little, you know, I guess, big picture commentary on how you see it unfolding or kind of, you know, where that will lead to, or what your kind of expectations are? Well, you know, I'll just say what we've said a number of times and maybe give a little additional color. You know, at its peak, RESG was about 70% of our funded balances. It's at the end of the last quarter, was 64%, or rounded up to 64, so it was like 63.55, I think. And we expect RESG to continue to come down, not that we expect those balances. You know, as I said, we're probably gonna be more or less flat on funded balances over the next year because we're gonna take this hit from this payoff wave. It's gonna keep RESG from growing. And during that period of time, I think, you know, we see these other lines of business. And again, it includes our commercial bank and our ILD businesses, not just CIB. CIB is a big part of it and will probably grow faster than the others, but it, you know, these other units are gonna be big parts of what we do as well. So, you know, I think we will get to a period of time, even having RESG grow as much as it can grow and do every deal that meets our RESG standards. I think over two or three years, we'll get to a point where RESG is less than 50% of our total outstanding book. It may be, and probably will be, bigger than it is today, but it'll be less than 50% of our book because these other units will make big growth contributions, so our guys there understand the strict credit standards they've got to adhere to. They completely embrace and agree with those standards, but we've got high-performing teams over each of these verticals in CIB, as well as our commercial banking and indirect lending units, and those guys see lots of opportunities for us to grow out there. Perfect. Okay, I appreciate that, George. And then the last one for me, just maybe for Tim. Tim, on the, you know, maybe just run back through or just give your overview on, you were kind of talking about the best case scenario in terms of rates, rates, movement down on, on the margin and kind of the, the worst case scenario. You know, can you just walk back through what that was quickly on, you know, where you have the, your biggest upside to the margin rebounding? Yeah. Hey, Brian. You know, our comments and guidance that we've given in the document assumes that the Fed is moving 25 basis points over their next six meetings. And so if they, you know, if they move slower than that, then that's obviously a better situation for us. If they move quicker or move in 50 basis point increments, then that's a more challenging environment for us. If they, if they- More challenging in the upfront quarter. It is. More helpful in the later quarters. That's correct. Yeah. So our floors will start to kick in, as you can see in that chart we gave you, those floors- Yep will start to kick in pretty meaningful in those scenarios, too. So, and then the timing of when we can reprice our cost of interest-bearing deposits obviously is all dependent on, you know, the Fed moves as well. Yep. So. Got it. Um, yep. Okay, gotcha. And then, Tim, you didn't, I know you commented about the buyback in the slides, but in terms of M&A, any change in kind of the outlook in terms of M&A today, or just how you're thinking, how you're viewing that today? No change. I mean, there's not a lot of activity from the traditional M&A standpoint at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of opens up next year. You know, we'll be active in looking at opportunities, but we've got such a great track record with our organic growth and the- Yep - the momentum we've got with CIB. We don't want to do anything that's disruptive to that organic growth that we've got. But, we're very interested in growing our bank, and if there's an opportunity that fits our very disciplined M&A strategy, that's something that we would look at. Perfect. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes on the line with Samuel Varga of UBS. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning. Good morning. I just wanted to switch over to deposits really quickly. Noted the branch expansion plans by the end of twenty twenty-five, and I was just curious if you have any particular or specific deposit production targets for those branches that are coming online, and also what sort of geographies are you thinking? Sure. This is Cindy. Thank you for the question. We don't have a specific deposit target when we open a branch. We know. We have a general idea of what the market opportunity is when we select those sites. We select them for any number of reasons. It could be that we have a hole in the marketplace that we're trying to fill because our customers want us to be there, and we get feedback from our customers. It could be that we need to have better coverage in a low to moderate income area, and so forth. So, we know about what each branch should do, but we don't. I can't paint each one with the same brush. Each branch has a very individual approach to why we selected it, what our expectations are of the growth. But overall, if we're, as it says, in the management comments, we're growing roughly 10% over the next eighteen months or so. And a lot of that timing depends on things like entitlements of the site, construction timelines, regulatory approvals, and the like. We know that generally, you know, I'm gonna say, you know, a minimum of eventually, you know, $20 million-$50 million in deposits per branch and beyond. But again, that's just highly dependent upon the market and really the micro market that that branch is located in. The branches we're looking at adding are within our existing states of Arkansas, Texas. Georgia ... Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina. So we're not looking at any branches outside of those six states at this time. And as we said in the comments, we would expect that branch network to be up plus or minus 10%, roughly 10% between now and year-end 2025. So our 230 number would be 250, 255, something in that range, would be where we would expect our branch count to be. You know, it takes a while to get a branch, you know, to build a significant customer base. You just don't open it and get to full capacity in a year or six months. It's a long-term process. So these branches we're adding are primarily expected to support our deposit growth needs in 2026, 2027, and 2028. They're not gonna have a meaningful impact on deposits next year. We'll continue to achieve that growth we need through our existing network. But this, you know, these will be important to our growth numbers, three to six years out. I'll add some color about the geography, that the biggest concentration of the new branches is in Texas. So those branches are in higher population areas and presumably would have a much higher deposit opportunity long term than some of the ones that we're opening in smaller areas in North Carolina and Georgia, for example. Got it. Thank you, thank you both for the color on that. I guess my last one would just be around fee income. It's not been, you know, very significant part of the revenue pie, but you've tested a number of drivers here, whether it's the syndication desk or the hedging desk or treasury management even. So I just wanted to get a sense for what you might think, what you think the run rate or the ramp might be, because these seem to be meaningful new opportunities. Yeah, we're not giving any forward guidance on that, except I would tell you that over the course of twenty twenty-five, we expect a nice upward trend in that. Now, what that is and how you quantify that, I want to be cautious about that. But you know, earlier this year, we launched a mortgage business. Those guys are. It was a year or two in planning. We launched it. We're very pleased with their initial results. They've got all the infrastructure built. They started taking applications sometime right around the end of Q1 or beginning of Q2. Of course, we're losing several hundred thousand dollars a quarter in that as that startup infrastructure, headcount cost and all exceeds revenue. But we are beginning to have a really nice ramp-up in origination volumes. We have an internal projection that we're certainly not gonna share, but you know, it shows a decent positive trajectory for that and that business becoming profitable next year as a contributor to net income. Then, Jake gave some pretty good color about their syndications desk and the interest rate swap hedging cap part of that business. You know, there are some other elements of that capital markets desk that could generate some nice fee income opportunities. It's too early for us to quantify and give any projections on that, but we're hopeful, and I think cautiously optimistic that those are gonna become both mortgage and that capital markets desk nice fee income contributors. And we've been spending a lot of money and a lot of resources on really growing and amping up the talent in our trust and wealth business. And while that's a very small business for us, we expect it to grow nicely between now and year-end 2025, and also be a contributor. So we've got a lot of things that don't get much airtime in any of our public comments because they're relatively new or relatively small. But I think, you know, three years, five years from now, we'll look at those and see them as pretty important parts of our business. Got it. Thank you, George, for all that color. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move on for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Timur Braziler of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Hi, good morning. Circling back to Catherine's question around construction loans going into permanent financing, I'm just wondering, are those going from variable to a more typical perm, kind of five-one type structure? Are those staying on as variable? And then I guess, you know, historically, OZK didn't seem to do much of their own permanent finance of the construction book, as those loans tended to get refi'd out, you know, kind of three years into the construction process. I'm just wondering, this change, is this more indicative of what's going on in the broader kind of secondary market for these loans? Or is this more indicative of clients waiting, maybe to refi into something at a less punitive rate? No, it's none of the above. We're not converting from variable to fixed. They're all with the same exact variable rate loan structure and minimum interest structure and so forth they had as a construction loan. We're not re-leveraging the loans or extending additional credit to the customers. And, you know, the permanent loan opportunities or the bridge loan opportunities that are attractive to our customers, most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time, are at substantially higher leverage points than our loans. Sometimes as much as 200% or 225% of our loan amount. So we're certainly not a permanent loan solution for a customer that's gonna come out of our loan and go into a permanent loan on the same asset at 150%-225% of our loan amount. So that's just not our business. With that said, one of the elements of our CIB's capital markets group is the ability for a fee to place permanent financing for our sponsors. This is a piece of business we have never tapped, and, you know, we would not be the lender on that. We do have relationships with those customers, and our CIB group believes that we can capitalize on the existing relationships we have with our customers and the ability of our team and experience of our team in placing credits on a bridge or permanent financing market to help our customers arrange that refinancing and generate some good fee income in the process. So that is an additional part of that capital markets desk that could become a nice contributor to profitability in the future. Great, thanks. And then as a follow-up, the comment about reducing the hold limit on newly originated loans to $500 million. The placement of that in the paragraph and talking about CIB, I think would imply that maybe you're seeing some larger credits coming through that portfolio, or you're expecting to see some larger credits coming through that portfolio. I mean, that's a really competitive space it seems like right now, with private credit and everything else. I guess, you know, what's the typical deal size that we should expect to see out of CIB? And then just, I know you've touched on it a little bit, through the comments already, but just what's the competitive advantage that OZK is bringing to the space that maybe some of these other private players don't have or aren't willing to do? Jake, you wanna talk about the relationship and the, Yeah ... relatively diverse deal size we're looking at? That'd be great. And again, another good question. You know, the average relationship size really depends on the business line. If you look at our ABLG group, those relationships are typically, call it $50-$150 million, that the bank might be holding, all the way down to, and some are fund finance, and then all the way down to our corporate banking and sponsor finance group, where in some cases, we're doing sponsor finance in the sense of providing leverage for, or providing debt, I should say, for M&A financing for family offices and private equity groups. Those loans are typically smaller. If you look at what was originated, you know, last quarter, we were averaging a OZK hold size of right about $50 million. I'd say our CBSF group, again, is gonna be, is holding on average $30 million-$75 million per transaction. We'll go above and beyond if we're gonna be agent of a larger syndication and need to. But it's really, within the C&I side, as you know, striking the balance between, you know, a commitment for the bank and, and capital commitment, but also with best overall yield and, and best in use of our dollars. So it's a, it's a balance that we walk associated with it there. Again, a lot of our additional yields will continue to come through fantastic cross-selling opportunities. And so we talked about our treasury management platform that's been upgraded and renewed, and it's really something fantastic for the institution to our interest rate hedging services all the way to private client and private banking services for the principals of these underlying firms. And so when you take all that into consideration, you know, it allows us to really develop some deep relationships that other institutions might lack. It allows us to, for lack of better terms, Mark Simos tells me this all the time on our team, we can out local the nationals and out national the local banks. And so we have the product, services, and capabilities, and also the credit chops to run with the big dogs with you, if you will. But we also are nimble enough, and competitive enough where we can compete with our local and regional peers. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Again, as a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one one. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Gerllinger of Citi. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning, everyone. Just curious, how do you guys think about some of the more stressed pockets of commercial real estate, specifically something like life science or office? I mean, JLL put out a report recently that said that the life science market, if you assume no new supply, could take up to five years. Is Is there anything that we should be looking at in terms of, like, your sponsors, that you might be putting more ACL towards those specific loans in general? Or how you guys are approaching just the credit standards of more stressed pockets of construction? Ben, you know, the key to our portfolio is really the fact that we have it designed on high-quality assets with strong sponsors in a way that ensures strong sponsor support in the vast majority of cases. So as you know, even with the reappraisal process that we've been going on in an environment where cap rates have gone up and values have come down, our weighted average loan-to-value on the entire RESG portfolio is still 51%. Tim, is that right? And our weighted average, or that's loan-to-cost. Loan-to-value is 43%. Yeah, forty-three. Fifty-one loan-to-cost and forty-three loan-to-value. Those very low leverage points, you know, mean that our sponsors and their capital partners have a ton of skin in the game that they need to protect. Now, if you've got a crappy old office building from the '60s or '70s or '80s that has no future, you might not be willing to protect that, even if you put 50% of the money in it. On the other hand, if you've got a high quality, you know, modern construction, built to modern standards, very desirable property that, you know, is ultimately gonna lease or ultimately gonna sell, you've got an incentive to defend that. So the low leverage points of our assets and the fact that the vast majority of our loans are on the new construction, not all of them, but the vast majority of them are on a state-of-the-art new construction projects, ensures that our sponsors have a... In most cases, our sponsors and capital partners have a very high motivation to defend those assets. And, you know, we've seen that with sponsor after sponsor, who has paid the loan down when we got an appraisal that showed a higher loan-to-value, posted additional reserves for a one- or two- or three-year extension, paid fees, and so forth, to extend. So the sponsors, by and large, have been very committed to protect these assets. The quality of the asset and the quality of the sponsors are the key differentiators in these loans, and we feel really good about the quality of our assets and the quality of our sponsors, by and large, across the portfolio. And that's why even though we've got a, you know, heavy CRE book, concentrated, it has performed very well throughout, this period of rising rates on the heels of the COVID pandemic and, you know, the other challenges that have faced commercial real estate. It's because we've got strong sponsors and quality assets, and the sponsors are motivated, willing, and, in most cases, capable of, staying in there and defending these assets long term. Gotcha. And then in the prepared commentary, you guys gave some remarks towards NII for twenty twenty-five. And then with the presumed paydowns and payoffs of your RESG portfolio, I know you guys front-load some of the early payoff fees and all those great things. So it temporarily boosts net interest income because you mark it on that day. Is that included within your NII outlook? Yeah, our NII outlook includes everything that would normally be under GAAP accounting, calculated as part of net interest income. It's all in accordance with GAAP accounting. Gotcha. Okay, appreciate it. Thanks. All right, thank you. Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to George Gleason, Chairman and CEO, for closing remarks. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks for all the great questions. Thanks for your interest in Bank OZK. We look forward to talking with you and reporting some good fourth quarter results in about ninety days. Thanks so much. Have a good one. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.