Pinnacle Financial Partners, Inc. 2026 Q3 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Thank you and good morning.

During today's quarterly earnings call, we will reference the slides and press release that are available within the investor relations section of our website, pnfp.com. President and CEO Kevin Blair will begin the call. He will be followed by our Chief Financial Officer, Jamie Gregory, and they will be available to answer your questions at the end of the call. Our comments include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and the actual results could vary materially. We will list these factors that might cause results to differ materially in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements because of new information, early developments, or otherwise, except as may be required by law.

During the call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures related to the company's performance. You may see the reconciliation of these measures in the appendix to our presentation. Kevin Blair will provide an overview of the quarter.

Thank you, Sam, and good morning, everyone. Three quarters in, we are executing on the things we said mattered. For our team, that meant protecting the culture, hiring the best bankers in our markets, and removing the distractions that get between them and their clients. For our clients, it has meant more visibility, more proactive advice, and continuing to exceed what they expect from us, even as our bankers adapt to one unified model. For all of it while preparing for a conversion that will unite our platforms seamlessly and give clients functionality and capabilities they did not have before. That is what moves a merger past the question of whether it will work and on to why it is working so well. Every quarter since close has added to the evidence. This one continues that trend.

It's why we remain convinced on the significant shareholder value in this deal. For the third quarter of 2026, we reported diluted EPS of $2.40 and adjusted diluted EPS of $2.69, excluding $56 million of pre-tax adjusted items. Year to date, adjusted EPS is up 23% over the same period last year. Let me start with growth on the balance sheet. The third quarter is one more proof point that this model is built to deliver outsized growth. Loans grew $1.7 billion linked quarter, led again by C&I. Deposits grew $2.1 billion, well ahead of what the combined firm has historically produced in the third quarter. Together, that drove net interest income up 3% linked quarter, and we have now grown NII more than 2% in every quarter since close. Three quarters in a row is a pattern, and the pattern is the point. Fee income was a standout.

Adjusted non-interest revenue grew 19% linked quarter, helped by a record production quarter at BHG and a gain in our equipment leasing business. What I want you to hear is what sits underneath these two items. Core banking, wealth management, and capital markets are up double digits year to date on a combined basis. Different line item on the income statement, same pattern. Expenses are aligned with the strategy. The dollars are going where we said they would go, into bankers and into technology. The discipline shows up in positive operating leverage, which we delivered again this quarter and drove the 95 basis point improvement in our adjusted tangible efficiency ratio from the second quarter. Investing for growth and improving efficiency at the same time is exactly the point of this combination. Same pattern. Credit remains a strength.

Net charge-offs landed inside our 20-25 basis point range for the third straight quarter, and the non-performing assets ratio was flat at 50 basis points. The loans we are putting on the books are high quality, and we are not seeing broad-based stress anywhere in the portfolio. Growth at this pace with credit this clean is what the Pinnacle model has consistently delivered. Again, same pattern. We also built capital again this quarter. Preliminary CET1 increased eight basis points while we funded $1.7 billion of loan growth. That is the earnings power of this franchise showing up in the capital ratios. The recurring question about a merger is talent. Do the bankers stay, and can you still recruit? Recruiting has not slowed and it has not flatlined. It is running well ahead of what the two companies produced combined in 2025.

We added 96 experienced revenue producers this quarter, 222 year to date, and October is running strong enough that we expect to clear the top end of our original 225-250 target. More than half of this year's hires came into core Synovus markets. That was the revenue synergy we underwrote in this deal, and it is showing up in the numbers today. Net growth in revenue producers is also running ahead of our expectations because retention is holding up alongside recruiting. Producer retention, excluding merger-related synergies, is 95% year to date. That is better than our historical years, and we posted it in the middle of a merger. It says a lot about the underlying model. Synovus bankers see what it offers and want to be part of it, and the Pinnacle bankers see that nothing about how they serve clients has changed.

Clients keep the bankers they choose, which is why they tell us they value us most. The clients are staying with them. Coalition Greenwich fielded its latest survey six months after closing, which is about the hardest moment you could pick to ask clients how they feel about their bank. They ranked Pinnacle number one in our net promoter score amongst the larger banks in our footprint against an expanded peer set, and our score rose 2 points from the first quarter. The same study shows Pinnacle leading in clients expecting to do more business with us over the next 6-12 months at a level much higher than our peers. The attrition data tells the same story. Non-CD deposit account closures are down in 2026 versus 2025 in both dollars and number of accounts.

When a bank of our size goes through a combination, you expect some clients to head for the door. Fewer are leaving this year than last. Market share closes the loop. The latest FDIC data shows Pinnacle growing deposits at almost three times the pace of our MSA footprint on a combined basis. We moved up in rank in five states and 17 MSAs. We held number one in Nashville, Tennessee and Columbus, Georgia, and grew share in Atlanta by almost 50 basis points to strengthen our number four ranking. Growth, talent, clients. Same pattern across all three. That is the point. Lastly, integration remains on schedule for operational and brand conversion in March 2027. This quarter, we completed systems migrations across client care, mortgage origination, our health savings account business, and select capital market capabilities, and we continued expanding the Pinnacle brand through card reissuance and new signage.

The work ahead is end-to-end testing and preparing our front line to deliver a seamless day one. One thing that is different about this conversion is how we are testing it. AI now supports the full testing life cycle. It reviews requirements, drafts test cases, builds the automation, and repairs the test when screens change, with a person approving every step. Across the 838 test scripts completed to date, we estimate AI handled close to 80% of the scripting and cut the time required by roughly 70%. The tools are not perfect, and it still takes our people to code, build, validate, and test, and deploy them into the production environment, but it's getting faster as we go. We said from the start that we would protect the client experience through conversion, with a timeline built for great execution rather than pulling cost synergies forward.

Nothing we have seen changes that. We are confident in March, and we will get there the same way we have gotten here, quarter after quarter, same pattern. With that, I'll turn it over to Jamie for more detail on the quarter.

Jamie? Thank you, Kevin. Adjusted diluted EPS increased 8% versus the prior quarter and 19% versus the third quarter of 2025.