管理層發言
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the South Plains Financial Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. I will now hand it over to Steve Crockett, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of South Plains Financial. Please proceed.
Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining our earnings conference call. The related earnings press release and earnings slide deck presentation issued earlier today are available on the News & Events section of our website, spfi.bank. Please refer to Slide 2 of the presentation for our safe harbor statements regarding forward-looking statements. All comments expressed or implied made during today's call are made only as of today's date and are subject to those safe harbor statements in the presentation and earnings release. In addition, please refer to Slide 2 of the presentation for our disclaimer regarding the use of non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our presentation and earnings release. I'm joined here today by Curtis Griffith, our Chairman and CEO; Cory Newsom, our President; and Brent Bates, City Bank's Chief Credit Officer. Curtis, let me hand it over to you.
Thank you, Steve, and good afternoon. I'm very pleased with the results that we delivered over the past quarter and the full year and would like to thank our employees for their hard work and commitment to City Bank and our customers. Their efforts are the key to our success, and they demonstrate every day the culture that we have developed over many years. At South Plains, our core purpose is to use the power of relationships to help people succeed and live better. I believe that we're here to help enhance lives by creating a great place to work help people achieve their goals and invest generously in our communities because there is nothing more rewarding than helping people succeed and live better. This also helps us to attract the best employees, develop deep relationships with our customers and ultimately, deliver strong financial results for our shareholders. This can be seen by our achievements for the full year of 2025, as outlined on Slide 4 of our presentation where we delivered a 17.8% increase in diluted earnings per share, loan growth in line with our guidance, 33 basis points of NIM expansion as our NIM was 4% for the fourth quarter.
Tangible book value per share growth of more than 14% to $29.05, and as previously announced, we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire BOH Holdings and its banking subsidiary, Bank of Houston. While I am very proud of our results, I'm even more excited with the opportunities that I see ahead as we continue to execute our strategy to enhance our earnings. It is focused on expanding our lending team across our high-growth Texas markets as well as pursuing accretive M&A opportunities. Through the past year, we made great strides on both initiatives, highlighted by our definitive agreement announcement in December to acquire Bank of Houston. As highlighted on Slide 5, we believe Bank of Houston will complement our existing Houston team and bring both meaningful scale and deeply entrenched customer relationships to South Plains in one of the fastest-growing metropolitan markets in the country.
More importantly, the Bank of Houston team, led by Jim Stein, holds similar values to those that we hold dear at South Plains: deep customer relationships, disciplined credit standards, and a genuine focus on employees and communities. As we have consistently said on these calls, finding an acquisition partner with a similar culture and values is a necessary factor to a successful merger, and I believe we found that in Bank of Houston. I'm looking forward to partnering with Jim, who will continue to lead his team once the merger is consummated, while also joining the Boards of both South Plains and City Bank. Jim will provide important continuity and leadership depth as we work to further scale our presence in the Houston market. Looking deeper into the Houston market, our existing team has worked hard to build a strong presence in Houston as our loan portfolio has grown at a 34% compound annual rate over the last 5 years.
By bringing BOH into the South Plains family, we are projected to have more than $1 billion in loans in the Houston region, which is significant to us. Importantly, both institutions share a focus on commercial real estate lending, a segment where Bank of Houston has built a high-quality portfolio and where Bank of Houston and City Bank's credit culture and underwriting discipline are closely aligned. We believe the merger is a good strategic fit with low execution risk and a platform that enables us to both deepen and expand our customer relationships. Financially, this merger is also compelling, as we expect it to be approximately 11% accretive to our earnings in 2027 with an attractive tangible book value earn-back of less than 3 years. We believe that BOH is a highly efficient, profitable company that has demonstrated consistent performance and that the transaction is structured to provide that we are very much aligned.
I look forward to officially welcoming the Bank of Houston team when the merger is completed, which we expect to occur early in the second quarter of 2026. While we expect BOH to be a tailwind to our growth. I'm also very encouraged with the progress we've made in recruiting talented lenders to South Plains as we continue to benefit from the dislocation that is occurring across our markets from the mergers that have taken place over the last 2 years, which Cory will touch on. Taken together, we expect our loan growth to accelerate to a mid- to high single-digit growth rate in 2026, which should also drive a nice acceleration to the earning power of South Plains. To conclude, we believe we are in a strong capital position that will allow us to benefit from many opportunities that we have in front of us. Given our capital position, we remain focused on growing City Bank while also returning a steady stream of income to our shareholders through our quarterly dividend and keeping a share buyback program in place. Last week, our Board of Directors authorized a $0.17 per share quarterly dividend, which will be our 27th consecutive dividend. Now let me turn the call over to Cory.
Thank you, Curtis, and hello, everyone. Starting on Slide 6. Our loans held for investment increased by $91 million to $3.14 billion in the fourth quarter as compared to the linked quarter. The increase was primarily due to organic loan growth in multifamily property loans, direct energy loans, and other commercial loans. I would note that our average loan balances were down slightly in the fourth quarter because the majority of our loan growth came on later in December, which should provide a lift to our net interest income in the first quarter. Our yield on loans was 6.79% in the fourth quarter as compared to 6.92% in the linked quarter. It's important to point out that our loan yield was boosted by 8 basis points in the third quarter due to $640,000 in interest and fees related to resolution of credit workouts. Additionally, our loan yield was also boosted by 23 basis points in the second quarter due to a $1.7 million interest recovery from the full repayment of a loan that had been on nonaccrual.
Excluding these one-time gains, our yield on loans was 6.84% in the third quarter and 6.76% in the second quarter, representing a relatively steady loan yield over the last 9 months. While we have not yet experienced a material impact to our loan yields from the series of FOMC 25 basis point reductions in their target interest rate in September through December, we do expect our loan yields to moderate in the quarters ahead. That said, we remain optimistic that we can continue to reprice our deposits and manage our margin as market rates decline. Accelerating our loan growth has been our #1 strategic priority over the last year as we focus on expanding our lending platform. We've been selectively recruiting experienced lenders to City Bank across our growth markets while also benefiting from the dislocation created by our competitors' acquisitions. We ended the year having completed about 50% of our expected hiring occurring across our Dallas, Houston, and Midland markets.
We expect our new lenders will bring the high-quality long-term customer relationships that they have built in their successful careers to South Plains, which we expect will drive an acceleration to our loan growth to the mid- to high single-digit range in 2026. In fact, we are already seeing an acceleration given the strong loan growth that we delivered in the fourth quarter as well as a nice pickup in our major metropolitan markets of Dallas, Houston, and El Paso, where loans increased by $15 million or 5.8% annualized to $1.03 billion as outlined on Slide 8. Given our thoughtful expansion in these markets, we expect loan activity to continue to improve and are also excited to close our pending merger with BOH, which will increase our scale in the high-growth Houston market. That said, we do still expect some headwinds in the first quarter of 2026 from several expected payoffs in our multifamily property portfolio.
Turning to Bank of Houston. They had approximately $772 million in assets, $633 million in loans, and $629 million in deposits as of September 30, 2025, which will provide us with a substantially expanded platform in the Houston market. Importantly, Houston's Harris County was the #1 fastest-growing county in the U.S. in 2024 while also being the top relocation destination. The economy is dynamic, and we should see our commercial and private banking relationships expand across the Houston market. More importantly, we took time to get to know BOH's management team, employees, and their culture. I personally spent time getting to know Jim Stein, and I really appreciate his philosophy for running Bank of Houston and quickly came to realize that our cultures were very similar. I can say that our banks would work well together and that our teams were like-minded which should minimize potential disruption and risk from the acquisition and its integration.
I'm even more confident on that today. At South Plains, we built a great business in Houston with a strong team and BOH should nicely complement our growth strategy and provide important scale in a terrific market. Skipping to Slide 11. Our indirect auto loan portfolio totaled $241 million at the end of the fourth quarter, which is relatively unchanged as compared to $239 million at the end of the linked quarter. As we discussed on our third quarter call, we have been carefully managing this portfolio with a focus on maintaining its credit quality over the last 2 years which has resulted in a decline in loan balances of $55 million since the third quarter of 2023 when the portfolio was $296 million. Over this time period, we have seen competitors become more aggressive at the higher end of the credit spectrum while volumes have declined. More recently, we've tied our loan to value requirements to further ensure that we are proactively managing this portfolio in the current economic environment as well as any potential challenges to come.
It's also important to highlight that this consumer portfolio comes primarily through auto dealers who are in our markets. To further improve the transparency on this portfolio, given some of the challenges in the sector, we have updated our indirect auto disclosure. What you can see is that 94% of our current indirect auto portfolio was originated in the super prime or prime categories with an additional 5% originated in the near-prime categories. This allows for normal credit deterioration to occur over time with the majority of the portfolio remaining super prime and prime. In fact, from the origination to the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, we have experienced only modest deterioration with the portfolio now 87.7% super prime or prime with 5.6% near-prime. The strong credit profiles of our consumer borrowers can further be seen in the credit metrics of this portfolio as our 30-plus days past due loans which totaled approximately $464,000 improved another 5 basis points to 19 basis points in the fourth quarter.
We continue to believe that our past due status is the best early indicator to any potential signs of credit stress in this portfolio and believe our tightened credit standards will further protect City Bank and the credit profile of our indirect auto portfolio as we look forward. Additionally, our net charge-offs for all consumer autos were approximately $382,000 for the quarter as compared to $160,000 in the third quarter. Turning to Slide 12. We generated $10.9 million of noninterest income in the fourth quarter, which was relatively flat as compared to $11.2 million in the linked quarter. The modest decline from the third quarter was primarily due to a $185,000 decrease in mortgage banking revenues, mainly due to the typical seasonal decline in mortgage volumes through the fourth quarter as can be seen on Slide 13. Overall, we are pleased with how our mortgage business is performing in the slow transaction and interest rate environment and believe we are well positioned for an eventual upturn in volumes.
For the fourth quarter, noninterest income was 20% of bank revenues essentially flat with the linked quarter. Continue to grow our noninterest income remains a focus of our team. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve.
Thanks, Cory. For the fourth quarter, diluted earnings per share were $0.90 compared to $0.96 from the linked quarter. This decrease was primarily a result of a larger provision for credit losses as we experienced strong loan growth in the quarter, though the majority of those new loans funded later in December, coupled with the one-time interest income items in the linked quarter. Starting on Slide 15, net interest income was $43 million for the fourth quarter, in line with the third quarter's results. Our net interest margin calculated on a tax-equivalent basis was 4% in the fourth quarter as compared to 4.05% in the linked quarter. As already mentioned, we had loan interest and fee items related to credit workouts that positively impacted our NIM in both the third quarter and the second quarter of 2025. The third quarter impact was 6 basis points or $640,000, while the second quarter impact was 17 basis points or $1.7 million.
Excluding these one-time items in both periods, we delivered steady NIM expansion over the course of the past year. So that expansion slowed in the fourth quarter to just 1 basis point. As outlined on Slide 16, deposits held steady from the linked quarter at $3.87 billion at the end of the fourth quarter, while we experienced strong growth over the full year with deposits rising by $253 million or 7% from year-end 2024. Noninterest-bearing deposits modestly decreased by $26 million in the fourth quarter, which led to a slight decline in our noninterest-bearing deposits to total deposits ratio to 26.4% as compared to the linked quarter. Importantly, we grew our noninterest-bearing deposits by $88 million for the full year 2025 and which drove a slight increase in our noninterest-bearing deposits to total deposits ratio as compared to year-end 2024. Our cost of deposits decreased by 9 basis points to 2.01% compared to the linked quarter as we have been repricing our deposit base lower following the FOMC series of 25 basis point reductions in September through December.
Looking forward, we expect a modest decline in our cost of funds in the first quarter given the Fed's most recent adjustments in December. Turning to Slide 18. Our ratio of allowance for credit losses to total loans held for investment was 1.44% at December 31, 2025, relatively stable from the end of the prior quarter. We recorded a $1.8 million provision for credit losses in the fourth quarter compared to $500,000 in the linked quarter. As I previously mentioned, the increase in provision was largely attributable to the strong loan growth that we delivered in the fourth quarter. Skipping ahead to Slide 20. Our noninterest expense was $33 million in the fourth quarter, unchanged from the linked quarter. During the quarter, we had an increase of $1.1 million in professional service expenses related primarily to approximately $500,000 in acquisition-related expenses in addition to consulting on technology projects and other initiatives, which were largely offset by a decrease of $1 million in personnel expenses.
Looking to the first quarter, I would expect noninterest expense to trend modestly higher. Moving to Slide 22. We remain well capitalized with tangible common equity to tangible assets of 10.61% at the end of the fourth quarter, an increase of 36 basis points from the end of the third quarter. Tangible book value per share increased to $29.05 as of December 31, 2025, compared to $28.14 as of September 30, 2025. The increase was primarily driven by $12.7 million of net income after dividends paid and by an increase in accumulated other comprehensive income of $3.4 million. This concludes our prepared remarks. I will now turn the call back to the operator to open the line for any questions.
分析師問答
Our first question comes from Woody Lay with KBW.
Wanted to start on the NIM outlook. And I know if you adjust for some of those workout fees, NIM was relatively stable quarter-over-quarter. As you think about the strong growth you expect in 2026, do you think the NIM can remain relatively stable? Or is that higher growth going to come on at lower spreads and you could drive the NIM down a little bit?
Yes, I'll start, Woody. This is Steve. Regarding the NIM outlook, you're correct. We are aiming for loan growth, which should benefit us. However, there are numerous factors that influence this, and it's difficult to say we can increase it from the current level. Some loans are repricing from their floors, and others from the past year or two have decreased due to changes from the Fed. There are many moving parts involved. We will strive to maintain the NIM around where it is now. However, considering the loan growth we can achieve and any new deposits we might acquire, it might be challenging. There's still significant competition out there as we try to align with their deposit strategies. Some competitors aren't reducing their rates as quickly on certain funds. With that in mind, I don't anticipate expansion, and we will focus on keeping it steady, although some compression could occur.
Woody, there will definitely be some exposure to compression. We need to determine if we can manage the cost of deposits as effectively as we have in the past. It would be somewhat naive to assume there won't be any pressures in that area.
Yes. And then how do you think about the deposit growth during the year? Because I know that you're expecting strong growth and then also with the pending BOH acquisition, they've got jumbo CDs as around 30% of deposits. So it would feel like you could flex your legacy markets a little bit on the deposit side. So how are you thinking about deposit growth throughout the year?
Woody, this is Curtis. You're correct in your observation. I believe that BOH currently has a strong net interest margin. However, we think that over time, we can lower the cost of their deposits by transitioning them to a higher structure. This could help mitigate some of the pressures on net interest margin, but the key question is how quickly we can achieve this.
Got it. And then just last for me, shifting to M&A, you put in the release that you're open to additional deals that look similar to BOH. So would your preference be to add more scale in Houston? Are you looking all over the footprint? And just would you be comfortable announcing a deal with BOH pending? Or do you kind of need to see that deal close and get through integration first?
Cory here. First off, we're not aiming to be serial acquirers; we're being very deliberate in our approach. BOH is a prime example. We conducted extensive research on BOH before reaching out to explore potential opportunities. This is how we're evaluating all options, not just randomly contacting companies. We are methodical and thoughtful in our process. Would we be concerned if something were announced? Not at all, but we prioritize careful consideration. It has been quite a while since our last acquisition, proving that we’re not impulsive. Houston is a strong market for us, and while we have no issues there, we aren't limited to just that area; any potential deal must make sense.
The next question comes from Brett Rabatin with Hovde Group.
Wanted to talk a little bit about payoffs, which has been a topic that has slowed loan growth the past few quarters. It didn't seem like it did at all in 4Q. And so I was just curious if there were really no payoffs in the fourth quarter and then just the expectations, it sounds like you might have some in the first quarter. How are you guys thinking about net versus growth for '26 with this mid- to high single-digit growth expectations?
This is Brent. I'll kind of start by addressing your question on the payoffs. You're right, the fourth quarter was lighter on early payments than the prior 3 quarters. And that did help the net growth number, we do think there are a few more that timing is uncertain but we think they're going to see long-term fixed-rate financing. And so we factored that into our estimates for what we're hoping for on growth side. But it's hard to predict them all, but we've got a pretty good handle on the ones we think we'll ultimately see long-term fixed rate.
Brent, I want to make a comment. This is Cory. We have moved past a period where we had some exits we wanted to make. We are now facing the usual dynamics between payoffs and upcoming fundings. The situations we mentioned for the first quarter are not unexpected and align with their expected life cycle. We believe we have successfully navigated the separations we felt were necessary.
I appreciate the additional information. I remember you focused on your indirect auto book, which I found to be of high quality. However, the additional details made me curious about one specific topic: the migration from origination to the small segment of less than 4% related to the deep subprime credit of $9.2 million. How are you monitoring that? How do you perceive the shift from super prime or prime to that level? Are you noticing customers who may have lost their jobs, or how do they end up classified as deep subprime? If they are not past due, is it because their balances are higher, or what factors have contributed to their deep subprime status?
Yes, this is Brent. In our studies, we discovered that some issues could have stemmed from mispayments or minor medical collections that negatively impacted credit scores. We didn't find evidence connecting student lending to this situation. However, we did notice that while some in the portfolio had increased credit scores, others experienced significant declines. This wasn't surprising given current consumer trends, which are somewhat K-shaped. Overall, we feel confident in the quality of our portfolio and our strategy of focusing more heavily on the higher credit score segment than many in the industry. This approach has proven effective. The past due ratio serves as a reliable indicator of our portfolio's quality. Brett, we hope that you recognize the key points we shared, as we provided some additional details. We realize we may have gone into more depth than usual, but we really want you to understand that the conditions remain very favorable. Despite everything, it’s essentially a non-issue for our portfolio. The exposure is minimal, and we are excited to share these numbers to highlight how stable our situation truly is.
Okay. That's helpful. Yes, I haven't really been worried about that piece of the book, but it's the color kind of made me curious about a few topics on it. So I appreciate the color on that.
We discussed this because we had some concerns, although it's still quite minor in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, for my last question, I was hoping to get some insights on whether you're planning to be more aggressive in hiring mortgage lenders. Since mortgage banking constitutes 20% of your revenue and has been fairly stable, I'm curious about your strategies. I understand that interest rates play a role in this, but are you taking any different approaches in mortgage? Are there plans to expand in this area in the upcoming quarters? Additionally, I would appreciate any thoughts on potential fee income drivers, aside from mortgage, in 2026.
Yes, I can confirm that we are currently focused on hiring producers because volume is critical. We have been careful to avoid putting ourselves in a negative position and have been trying to maintain stability until conditions improve. Finding good producers is our top priority at the moment. We have preserved our infrastructure, which we value, and we are actively looking to bring on more producers.
The next question comes from Joe Yanchunis with Raymond James.
So I was hoping to start with the Bank of Houston. How much revenue upside you see beyond the announced cost savings, particularly from cross-selling or balance sheet optimization?
Yes, that's a good question, Joe. I'll start and then let anybody else pick up. I mean, we like where they're at. I mean, we do believe that there's some additional products that we can help bring to them. I don't know that there's at this point, this same thing we would love to try to quantify as to whether it's our wealth management area which would include trust services. I mean, we're going to push for those things. But as far as any of the modeling we did, that's not necessarily built into any of our numbers but we will certainly try to push for bringing those type products to them.
Yes, I think Houston is a great bank, and they have done a really good job so far. We have a bit more scale than they do, and I believe we can leverage some of our resources to assist them. Specifically, I think treasury will be one of the key areas where we can help. They have successfully figured out how to fund their bank based on the principles we advocate in other areas. They have built strong relationships, similar to our approach, and we believe we can enhance those further with what we offer. There are definitely opportunities we intend to pursue.
I appreciate it. I understand that revenue synergies are not included in the model. I'm trying to gauge how much leverage there is in fee income from expanding the starter presence in Houston. Aside from the upcoming integration, are there any other technology investment priorities for 2026 that you are considering?
We are continuously working on technology to ensure we remain relevant in that area. One of our main goals is to prepare for an upcoming conversion that will allow us to implement improved workflows and enhance our loan operations on the credit side. We also aim to strengthen the credit aspect of the bank, especially in anticipation of acquiring a bank that typically has smaller average loan sizes than ours. It's crucial for us to be strategic since not all acquisitions yield the expected results. We need to invest effort into understanding and integrating with what they have already established. We've done a lot of work in that direction. Regarding synergies, we can only truly assess them once we start engaging with their team and evaluating the quality of their talent. We are quite impressed with what we've encountered so far, and we see promising opportunities that affirm our decision to pursue this acquisition. Jim has assembled a solid team, and there is significant talent available. We believe that by combining our resources with their capabilities, we can collaborate effectively.
That was very helpful. And I just have a couple of ticky-tack modeling questions here. Kind of starting off to piggyback off Woody's question on the NIM. Do you have a sense for what new loan yields were in the fourth quarter?
I mean, we're going to all let you look that up. I mean, I think the by and large, have been in the mid-6s.
And that's what I was going to say.
6.5%, 6.75%.
I mean we kind of had to build in some of that stuff to try to make sure that people are seeing some of the rates coming down so that we could stay competitive. But I think we've done a pretty good job in locking some of that stuff in.
No, absolutely. The high 6 is pretty good. Lastly, I was hoping you could break down the $500,000 you mentioned in acquisition-related expenses and what you spent on consulting. Is there a way to provide more detailed numbers for those?
Can you do the breakdown?
Yes, the $500 million in acquisition expenses will mainly be allocated to legal and professional services, with a significant portion also in professional services due to consultants assisting us with some of the projects. This will amount to several hundred thousand dollars in that category.
I definitely think that once we get through this year, we'll have a bit more expense, but those will go away.
Yes, once those projects are completed, we may have some amortization expenses from capitalized items, but the consulting expenses will disappear.
Our next question comes from Stephen Scouten with Piper Sandler.
I'm curious from an expense perspective, I think, Steve, I think I heard you say maybe expect expenses to be up a little bit, modestly higher in the first quarter from the fourth quarter. But how do you think about full year expense build, and what sort of additional new hire activities kind of built into those expectations?
Yes, for the full year, looking at 2025, our noninterest expense has remained steady at about $33 million per quarter. We anticipate normal salary adjustments will occur, and we still have some hiring initiatives in place for mortgage lenders and commercial loan producers. As for the commercial lender aspect, we are about halfway through our initial hiring plan, so there are still several positions to fill. Additionally, we expect to conclude some technology projects, which will lead to more expenses, but we will also begin to capitalize on some of these projects by the middle of the year.
We have been deliberate in our hiring approach and are about halfway through that process. We expect to bring in another one or two hires in the first quarter and plan to end the year as anticipated. In total, we expect to add around nine new lenders over a two-year period. Additionally, with the production team from BOH joining us in the early part of the second quarter, I believe these additions will complement each other well. As for expenses, we remain focused on achieving a breakeven point within six months or sooner for each lender we hire.
Yes. No, for sure. And the expense management, to Steve's point year-over-year was really good. That's helpful. And then from a deposit beta perspective, if my math is right, it looks like total deposit betas for the for the hikes we see, I mean, for the cuts so far have been around the 30% range. Is that kind of the right way to think about deposit betas moving forward? Or could that be more difficult just as deposit costs on an absolute basis move to the lower end?
It's probably the tad higher. We've got a number of the public funds that don't reprice until the first day of the month. So we that lags a little bit. So I mean it's probably closer to 35%, maybe not 40%. But I mean, we're focused on monitoring that and keeping it kind of consistent with those levels. If there's certain places we can do a little more, we will. If not, we'll we don't want to see a runoff on deposits in any area. So we just are trying to be mindful of what else we're seeing out there, but that's a close beta but maybe just a little bit low from what we actually would see.
Just keep in mind is what we've always said that we do. I mean we still do exception-based pricing. We do it on both sides of the balance sheet and which tells you we're not afraid to make the cuts that we need to make, but we might have some adjustments that come back in there around a little bit of that. But we're pretty focused on trying to make sure we keep these costs down and so that we can protect our NIM as much as we possibly can.
And then maybe just one last thing from me. The loan growth guidance is encouraging, projected in the mid- to high single digits. What gives you confidence in that level of increase considering the net growth we've seen over the past couple of years? Is it due to BOH, the new hires, improved customer demand, or a combination of these factors? Any insights you can provide would be appreciated.
I believe it's a combination of all factors. Considering BOH's situation, the chances of collaborating with them might not have arisen if they had excess liquidity. They have a talented team, and one of the contributions we've made is assisting them in enhancing their liquidity, reducing some of their workload. Our primary focus is on organic growth, although acquisitions are beneficial, we truly value the organic growth. We're proud of our team and the connections they've established. We have ongoing projects aimed at ensuring that our approval processes function smoothly, allowing us to scale the company effectively and safely. This involves being timely and responsive to meet our customers' needs and addressing what lenders are offering. Our opportunities are not solely reliant on acquisitions; we also see significant organic potential ahead.
That's great. Congrats on a great end of 2025 there.
This now concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back to Curtis Griffith for closing comments.
Thank you, operator. And thanks to everybody who participated in today's call. Concluding, we delivered some pretty strong results over the past year, while positioning South Plains for accelerating the growth in the year ahead. We've recruited outstanding lenders across our markets, and we believe they're going to bring new relationships to City Bank. We also entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Bank of Houston which will provide important scale in the fast-growing Houston MSA. We've laid the foundation to be a larger community bank, which includes making the necessary investments in technology, systems, and processes to grow efficiently. We've accomplished much, but we're not standing still. We continue to look for other attractive franchises. We believe we have the capacity to acquire maybe another bank of a similar size range but we will also selectively recruit high-quality lenders in our market. And as Cory just said, really push for organic growth. I'm very excited for what lies ahead for our employees, our customers, and our shareholders. Thank you again for your time today.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This concludes today's conference. Please disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.