SouthState (SSB) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript

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Friday, April 24, 2026 astatine 9 a.m. ET

• Chief Executive Officer — John C. Corbett

• Chief Financial Officer — William E. Matthews

• Chief Operating Officer — Stephen Dean Young

John C. Corbett: Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. For the quarter, SouthState Corporation delivered a instrumentality connected assets of 1.37% and a instrumentality connected tangible communal equity of 17.6%. As we advancement done 2026, our 4 main priorities are: first, to grow our commercialized banking income force; second, to present meaningful integrated growth; third, to systematically discontinue shares astatine an charismatic valuation; and fourth, to larn however to leverage the benefits of artificial quality and instrumentality it passim the company. We are making bully advancement connected each 4 fronts. As acold arsenic recruiting, we are present successful a output curve situation that is much favorable to equilibrium expanse growth.

With the consolidation disruption occurring passim our markets, we spot an accidental to grow our commercialized banking squad by 10% to 15% successful the adjacent mates of years. In the past six months alone, our part presidents were palmy successful attracting and increasing our commercialized banking squad by astir 7%. We are going to proceed to beryllium opportunistic, but based upon the accelerated success, we whitethorn dilatory the gait of hiring successful the adjacent fewer months. Second, for integrated indebtedness growth, indebtedness pipelines person grown 50% since past summer, and that has resulted successful coagulated annualized indebtedness maturation of 8% successful the 4th fourth and past different 7.5% indebtedness maturation successful the archetypal quarter.

Pipelines grew importantly again successful the archetypal quarter, which gives america assurance moving forward. Our erstwhile indebtedness maturation guidance for 2026 called for mid to precocious single-digit maturation this year. There is simply a decent accidental that we could extremity up connected the higher extremity of our guidance. The biggest item by acold has been the occurrence successful Texas and Colorado. On a year-over-year comparison, indebtedness accumulation successful those 2 states has much than doubled from $500 cardinal successful 2025 to $1.1 cardinal successful 2026. In Houston specifically, we experienced the highest indebtedness maturation of immoderate marketplace successful the full institution this quarter.

Third, connected banal buybacks, we person repurchased astir 4% of our shares outstanding since the opening of the 3rd 4th astatine an mean terms of $95.28. We proceed to spot this arsenic an charismatic usage of excess superior astatine a clip erstwhile slope valuations seem, astatine slightest to us, disconnected from cardinal show and intrinsic value. And past fourth, we are enthusiastically embracing the imaginable for artificial intelligence. We are deploying much and much Copilot licenses and grooming our slope astatine the idiosyncratic individual level. We are researching and opening to deploy AI tools from our large bundle providers astatine the section level. And we are looking for ways to reengineer processes betwixt departments astatine the endeavor level.