Newtek (NEWT) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer - Barry R. Sloane
• Chief Financial Officer - Frank DeMaria

TAKEAWAYS

• Net Interest Income -- $18.9 million, representing an increase of 26% quarter over quarter and 30% year over year due to a mix shift toward recurring income and higher yields on C&I LA loans.
• Basic and Diluted EPS -- $0.34, compared to $0.68 and $0.67 respectively in the third quarter of 2025, reflecting the impact of transitioning the revenue model.
• 2026 EPS Guidance -- $1.70 to $1.80 for the full year, which management reiterated based on anticipated fourth quarter lending seasonal lifts.
• Tangible Book Value Per Common Share -- $12.30, representing a 10% increase year over year and 78% growth since the acquisition of the bank in January 2023.
• Newtek Bank Deposits -- $2.5 billion, reflecting an increase of $1.3 billion over the prior-year period driven by digital account acquisition.
• Year-to-Date Loan Originations -- $1.2 billion, up 12% year over year as the company utilizes its deposit engine to fund growth.
• SBA 7(a) Loan Originations -- $215 million, compared to $187 million in the prior-year quarter, supported by ranking first in units approved for the SBA fiscal year.
• C&I LA Loan Originations -- $75 million, down from $104 million in the third quarter of 2025 as management tightened underwriting standards.
• SBA 504 Loan Originations -- $45 million, up from $28 million in the prior-year period reflecting increased demand for real estate financing.
• Operating Efficiency Ratio -- 58.7%, compared to 56.3% in the same quarter last year, reflecting ongoing investments in technology.
• Return on Average Assets -- 1.3%, compared to 3.1% in the prior-year quarter due to the shift in revenue mix toward interest income.
• Return on Average Tangible Common Equity -- 10.8%, compared to 24.0% in the third quarter of 2025.
• Allowance for Credit Losses -- $57.1 million, reflecting an $11.8 million increase since the end of 2025 to cover unguaranteed SBA 7(a) loan balances.
• Nonaccrual Loans -- 3.9% excluding government-guaranteed portions, which management identified as a key metric for risk assessment.
• Total Assets -- $3.5 billion, an increase of 47% year over year from $2.7 billion.
• NewTracker Referrals -- 600 to 800 unique business referrals per day, acquired at zero cost through alliance partners such as UBS and Morgan Stanley.
• Depository Accounts -- 47,000 accounts, representing growth from approximately 21,800 accounts in the prior-year quarter.
• Servicing Portfolio -- Over $5 billion in loans, reflecting the company's status as an S&P-rated servicer for federal regulators.
• Core Consumer Deposits -- $1.1 billion increase year over year, totaling 35,000 accounts as of the end of the quarter.
• Non-Affiliate Business Deposits -- $109 million increase year over year, representing a 48% growth rate for the segment.

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RISKS

• Sloane stated, "there has been stress on the historic portfolio," identifying high interest rates and stubborn inflation over the last four to five years as pressures on older vintage loans.
• Sloane warned that "at these higher level of rates, it is more challenging to make loans," leading the company to mute origination volumes and tighten underwriting guidelines.

SUMMARY

NewtekOne, Inc. (NASDAQ:NEWT) reported third quarter results that reflected a strategic transition from gain-on-sale revenue toward recurring net interest income. Management maintained its full-year earnings guidance while highlighting the growth of its digital banking platform and deposit base. The company reported significant asset growth and operating leverage, as operating expenses remained flat year over year despite a 47% increase in total assets. The leadership team indicated it is exploring strategic alternatives to achieve market recognition for its proprietary technology stack and digital business solutions ecosystem.

• Management is exploring strategic alternatives to address what it views as a market undervaluation of its technology platform. CEO Sloane stated, "We are working hard to have NewtekOne's value properly recognized and exploring all strategic alternatives intended to help the market better recognize that value."
• The company plans to market a securitization backed by $350 million to $400 million of commercial and industrial long-amortizing loan collateral in Jan. 2027.
• Newtek Bank's deposit gathering strategy focuses on offering market rates and digital convenience to acquire business and consumer accounts without a physical branch network.
• The NewTracker system generates 600 to 800 unique daily business referrals through more than 1,000 alliance partner contracts with firms such as UBS and Morgan Stanley.
• Recent technology updates include the integration of an automated insurance offering into the loan origination platform and the expansion of advanced digital engagement tools for client support.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• SBA 7(a): The Small Business Administration's primary program for providing financial assistance to small businesses through government-guaranteed loans.
• C&I LA: Commercial and Industrial Long-Amortizing loans, which are 10 to 25-year business loans that do not require balloon payments.
• NewTracker: A patented referral and lead generation system used to acquire and track business customers through alliance partners.
• Newtek Advantage: A digital business portal that provides clients with real-time analytics, account access, and document storage.
• ROTCE: Return on Average Tangible Common Equity, a performance ratio measuring profits against tangible shareholder equity.
• ACL: Allowance for Credit Losses, a reserve established to cover estimated credit losses in the loan portfolio.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the NewtekOne, Inc. Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Barry Sloane, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Barry R. Sloane: Thank you very much, operator, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the third quarter 2026 financial results conference call for NewtekOne, stock symbol NEWT on the NASDAQ. Joining me today on today's call is Frank DeMaria, the Chief Financial Officer of NewtekOne as well as the CFO of the Newtek Bank National Association. I wanted to thank Bryce Rowe, in charge of Investor Relations for NewtekOne, for helping put the presentation together and also the management team of all the Newtek entities for helping deliver a real solid quarter for us.

For those of you that want to follow the PowerPoint presentation along, please go to newtekone.com, go to the Investor Relations section, and you'll be able to follow along with this presentation in that particular area under Presentations. I'd like to bring everyone's attention to Slide #2 in that presentation. Please note the note that is in the document regarding forward-looking statements. Let us go to Slide #3. Third quarter 2026 highlights. We delivered basic and diluted earnings per share of $0.34. We are able to reiterate the 2026 earnings per share guidance range of $1.70 to $1.80 for the full calendar year that is maintained.

Important to note, up and to the right pattern in growth in book value and tangible book value continues to be maintained intact. As a matter of fact, our book value came in at $12.80, tangible book $12.30, respectively. The tangible book value growth was up 10% year-over-year and 78% since we took over the bank in January of 2023 and converted the publicly traded NewtekOne into a financial holding company. Also important to note that we are able to continue to grow earnings with real good operating leverage. On a year-over-year basis, our Q3 2026 operating expenses were flat and at 3.7%, respectively, on asset growth of 47% and 3.7% is on a year-over-year comparison.

Important to note, the company, since acquiring the nationally chartered bank has had good experience in growing deposits, and they have more than doubled for the second consecutive quarter. In 15 quarters, we have grown Newtek Bank's deposits from $142 million when we took over the bank to $2.6 billion. Non-affiliate business deposits increased quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year by $13 million and $109 million, respectively. And core consumer deposits climbed $231 million quarter-over-quarter and $1.1 billion year-over-year, with loan originations also growing with deposits fueling that growth and year-to-date loan originations of $1.2 billion were up 12% year-over-year.

Also important to note, for the SBA's fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, Newtek Bank ranked #1 by volume -- excuse me, #1 in units of SBA loans approved and #2 by dollars. Slide #4. In focusing on NewtekOne, I think the important aspect of our organization, as we look at the market and the economy, clearly, the concept of how our business is going to grow going forward with the marketplace really embracing artificial intelligence, or as the President calls it, super intelligence. We have built one integrated platform over the course of 28 years to serve the 36 million demographic that are defined as U.S.

SMBs through 5 digital solutions without the use of traditional bankers, brokers or BDOs. We think this is extremely important because as the marketplace starts to move towards the use of super intelligence or artificial intelligence, organizations that embrace that, particularly financial institutions and banks, are going to be extremely important and viable going forward. We do have concerns over industry that is primarily focused on traditional bankers and traditional branch network to acquire customers. On Slide #4, our NewTracker system, you could see, is able to acquire 600 to 800 unique business referrals per day and the cost per referral is $0. We manage that through alliance partners. It's all in our public documentation and our Ks and Qs.

Organizations like UBS, Morgan Stanley, and Raymond James, One came up a trade association that don't make these types of loans, aren't depositories, don't do payroll, don't do insurance, don't do real-time payments for their customers to us to provide them solution and enhance the overall benefit to the relationship they have with the customer. So I think it's important to note over 28 years and 3.5 years operating as a digital direct bank, we have excelled in banking, lending, insurance, real-time payments, and payroll. The patented NewTracker system, which I think is extremely important to our business model and its proprietary capabilities are extremely valuable.

The Newtek Advantage, which is the business portal, which is on our website that gives the client a real advantage of doing business with us over other financial institutions, offers a single pane of glass, delivering a full product suite to the customers. It gives them transactional capability, analytics, and data that our competitors simply do not. Looking at our organization further, we are an S&P-rated servicer. We're currently servicing over $5 billion worth of loans. And this is a business that we excel in. We service for the FDIC. We service for NCUA. NCUA is the credit union regulator.

We have a nice reputation in servicing small- and medium-sized business owners and loans that are made to that particular investor group. Also important to note, we have a frictionless digital account opening infrastructure that continues to gain momentum. Now a lot of banks have digital account opening, but it's primarily for consumer checking or consumer high-yield savings. There are very few financial institutions and in particular, even the biggest banks in the United States, in order to open up the banking account for business, you have to go into the branch and fill out the paperwork. We've done a very good job in this particular area.

We have approximately 47,000 depository accounts with no traditional bankers with 0 branches that basically are assisted by business service specialists on camera in the United States 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We're very proud of our operating history and have really delivered robust, flexible, and financial returns, both for ROAA, ROATCE, revenue growth, and our last 12 months of trailing net income. On Slide #5, we talk about our ecosystem for the customer with our five solutions built around the SMB, banking, lending, insurance, payments and payroll, all necessary and important functions for business owners that instead of dealing with us, if they don't deal with us, they're going to ADP and Paychex.

They're going to a local insurance agency, they go to a fintech for their loan and their bank for deposits. And regarding real-time payments, they just don't have it. So we're very proud of the ecosystem that we have built for our customers and think it is very much of a hidden value in our organization. Historically, we have expensed the intellectual property and the IT off of our balance sheet and income statement. Slide #6, NewtekOne's ecosystem, once again, focusing on that SMB value proposition.

It all relates to the customer, helping them grow their business and their revenues, reduce business owner risk, reduces business owner expenses and give them one platform, the Newtek Advantage for real-time data, which enables us to onboard them in a frictionless manner very quickly, give a customer a real-time view of their balances, card batches, chargebacks, ACH, Fed wires visible in the Newtek Advantage as well as an invoicing system, as well as full analytics, capturing historic transaction information and a lot of information that exists in the Advantage, including document storage and QuickBooks integration, as well as QuickBooks Analytics.

On Slide #7, there's a nice diagram on Slide 7, which really discusses how clients approach us with a referral through the NewTracker system. So you have this very big funnel, some coming from financial institutions for referrals, trade associations, CPAs, law firms, and alliance partners. And we get these unique referrals. We don't pay for them. We do pay a success fee if we provide a solution, some upfront in the case of lending and ongoing reoccurring income usually on the other solutions. And we're able to do this without branches, traditional bankers or brokers. We have -- we say hundreds of alliance partners. It's actually in excess of 1,000 that we have contracts with.

And these referrals come in on a regular basis. But when customers come to us for a loan, we don't look at the client saying, you're applying for an SBA loan, you're applying for commercial and industrial loan or a line of credit. We look at the customer and fit them with the best solution. So if we actually go to our website, we don't advertise on the website, we're an SBA lender. In many cases, they get an SBA loan, but we wind up giving them the best product at an attractive price and a low monthly payment to fit their needs. NewTracker is our patented engine. It's one application. It's one CRM.

It gives us tremendous intake, particularly using artificial intelligence to examine tax returns and spread financials, to examine lease agreements, to examine operating agreement as well as using AI to go to municipalities and get liens. This is how we're able to make loans on a completed loan package within 7 days from having all the information in one particular area. We also offer real-time tracking to our alliance partners, 24/7, 365 as well as giving them nightly reports. Underwriting and compliance check, it's terrific. We have complete data on the interaction with the customer, whether it's a text, whether it's an e-mail or a telephonic conversation. Let's go to Slide #8. The Newtek Advantage: a single pane of glass.

Extremely important is the quality of service. Matter of fact, when you look at our Trustpilot scores, NewtekOne on Trustpilot, 4.9 out of 5. Newtek Bank, 4.5 out of 5. When you go to entities like Deposit.com and you compare us against some of the top banks, which are below 2. They're like 1.8, 1.7, 1.6, we're 4.0 on Deposit.com. We're very proud of the fact that Trustpilot has us positioned as the #1 payroll provider for service and #2 in real-time payments. The Newtek Advantage snapshot on Slide #8 gives you an idea of the view that the client gets when signing up for one or many of our Newtek products. It's a digital-first entry.

It gives them real-time payments clarity, whether it's a wire, whether it's making payroll with the money going in on Monday and paying employees on Monday, whether it's having a batch of a Visa, Mastercard receivable actually hitting the same day that we're able to process the transaction, showing the client in the banking portal, what their batches are, refunds, chargebacks, everything right in the portal. We really give the client a live view of cash flow, payments, loans, banking, and payroll. And importantly, it's on demand, on camera access 24/7 individuals in the United States that can help the customer.

It's really tremendous value beyond traditional banking, particularly when we give clients unlimited document storage, web traffic analytics, and 2-way QuickBooks integration. On Slide #9, this is what NewTracker does. It does many, many things, not only for the client, for the alliance partner, but for our organization. And those Trustpilot scores that we get are not by happenstance. It's a live check on the operational efficiencies of our business service specialists and our CSRs in the field each and every day, every a.m., every p.m., every day, every week, and every quarter. Slide #10, which we talked about a little earlier, demonstrates the tangible book value per share, has a nice depiction of the dividends on top.

It shows the growth from the time we bought the bank to today, $12.30 in tangible book with dividends $15.11. Slide #11 shows the deposit growth and the success that we talked about, 11,646 business accounts for checking and business savings, core deposits, 35,000 accounts. Slide #12. We talk about this product quite a bit. It's an important product to us. It's a growth product for us. We refer to it as commercial and industrial, acronym C&I LA, LA standing for long-amortizing loan securitizations. What we've learned over the course of 23 years is clients strongly prefer amortized loans without a balloon payment over 10 to 25 years.

We do require personal guarantees joint and several and every 20% equity owner or greater at a minimum. And we also lien personal and business assets when obviously, the business assets are required, personal when applicable. But you could see when we put these loans on our balance sheet, we then put them into securitization. We're now doing these loans out of Newtek Bank National Association. So we talk about initial overcollateralization and current overcollateralization. That is the ownership certificates in these securitizations as they're done off balance sheet. Important to note, look at the current OC versus initial.

So you could see the excess cash flow that we get from these loans is amortizing the senior debt in the securitization. So it grows the ownership certificates and the book fairly rapidly over the course of time. I think this is indicative of the power of the excess cash flow coming off of loans that are put on the books at treasuries +950 over the 5 years. When you look at our securitization spreads, which are things that we've talked about in past presentations, they're typically 660 off the 5-year treasury. The loan is typically fixed for 5 years. There's 100 basis points of servicing, which we keep.

And then we have a spread historically of 560 to where the bonds are yielding in the marketplace. Slide #13 is an important slide that's Newtek Bank, N.A. You could see that at the Bank, and we're looking to do more and more of our business at the Bank and less and less of our business at the holding company. We have fairly high ROAAs, ROEs, efficiency ratios are low. NIMs are high, cost of deposits. It's market rate. I continue to say this on conference calls. If you're paying the consumer 1% or you're paying them 3.8% -- and I use the consumer, whether it's a business or whether it's actually an individual, what's more likely to move?

Paying them a market rate of interest or a rate that is materially below what the 2-year treasury or T-bills are currently paying? We think it's the latter. We think we give our customers a good deal. And through the Newtek Advantage, we actually are able to do more things for the customer where we're typically able to pay them 1% for business checking, 3.5% on savings. And so why should they give us their deposits below the risk-free rate?

Because we give them value, because we give them real-time payroll, because we give them real-time payments, because we give them analytics and transactional capability and data that they simply can't get at the top-4 big banks who historically love this customer base because they can grab their deposits at 2% to 3% below the risk-free rate. One other important note when you look at our organization relative to capital and credit, we're utilizing more of our capital at the Bank and at the holding company. Nonaccruals, and I think this is extremely important, excluding government guarantees that the SBA prefers in SOP that we buy out of the secondary versus them, 3.9% nonaccruals.

Obviously, when you include the government guarantees and the guarantees are still intact, it's a much higher number. So as market participants and analysts take the call report data, jam it into the AI models and they come out and go, wow, this is really high, that's where we're running into issues. For those of you that are following the company, paying attention to what we're doing, we believe we've historically done a good job over 23 years, managing risk and reward and you're getting compensated for the risk that's being taken.

Slide #14 provides further evidence of the fact that we are working very hard in improving the quality of the portfolio with enhanced hires in the servicing department, managing our ACL to loans held for investment, excluding the guarantees. And this is important data and statistics that we look at and manage on a regular basis. Slide #15 addresses our returns that we're providing our shareholders. With that, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Frank DeMaria and then we'll go to Q&A. Frank?

Frank DeMaria: Thanks, Barry. Barry covered most of the relevant metrics for the third quarter, but I wanted to touch on a couple of topics, namely net interest income and the bank's held for investment loan portfolio. Moving to Slide 17. Third quarter net interest income of $18.9 million is the highest quarterly net interest income that we've generated in the almost 4 years as a financial holding company. Quarterly net interest income was up 26% quarter-over-quarter and 30% year-over-year.

The quarter-over-quarter increase reflects a full quarter of interest income from long amortizing C&I loans that were originated in the second quarter as well as the impact of holding the government-guaranteed portions of SBA 7(a) loans on the balance sheet for longer than we have historically. Similarly, we expect third quarter C&I LA originations should benefit net interest income in the fourth quarter. Year-to-date, net interest income climbed 20% versus the first 9 months of 2025, and the revenue mix is also shifting to net interest income with third quarter and year-to-date at 26% and 23% of revenue, respectively, versus 19% and 20% for the comparable periods of 2025.

I'd also note a favorable net interest margin trend with a mix shift on both the earning asset and liability sides with the earning asset yield increasing with higher short- and medium-term interest rates and funding costs moving lower with deposit costs flat and the cost of borrowings down overall. Moving to Slide 18. Slide 18 describes the bank's held for investment loans at cost, which are subject to CECL. The primary point of this slide is that the $57 million allowance for credit losses is largely comprised of reserves against the portfolio of unguaranteed SBA 7(a) loans, which accounts for almost 90% of the bank's ACL.

The $51 million portion of the ACL on the SBA unguaranteed book is 8.1% of the SBA unguaranteed balances. With that, I'll turn it back to Barry, for closing remarks before we get into Q&A.

Barry R. Sloane: Thank you. I'd like to draw everyone's attention to Slide #19. Recently, we saw a transaction in the capital markets where Bluevine, a fintech, that acquires deposits and also acquires lending opportunities for third parties, agreed to be acquired by Valley National Bank for approximately $340 million. When I look at their technology versus ours, and we have intangible and goodwill assets on our books of $14 million because we've written off our IP over the course of time. I think that there's a lot of value in NewtekOne and Slide #19 reflects that. We have a proprietary internally developed technology stack. The NewTracker system is patented. It's a digital account opening. It's automated. It's a frictionless loan origination platform.

It's automated lead generation, offering real-time payments and a tremendous value proposition for the customer through the Newtek Advantage. It is a differentiated origination engine at a much lower cost and incredibly scalable. It's a closed-loop customer funnel. Borrowers are required to make payments from Newtek Bank account in lending, and there's a tremendous cross-service opportunity where one customer application feeds multiple applications across multiple solutions. We think that the banking industry, which has feasted on deposits below the risk-free rate and low-margin riskless loans with low charge-offs, we do believe that SI or AI will change that over the course of time.

And depositors and savers, particularly with higher rates are really going to push for higher rates for what basically through FDIC insurance is essentially some form of a treasury account. We have a very scalable operating infrastructure and platform, and we have a complete offering of solution for SMBs. And once again, there's no, I'd say, real markup given the low value of the intangibles and the goodwill. We welcome offering demos of the NewTracker system and the Newtek Advantage to the 6 analysts that follow our stock, learn more about our company, learn how we do the business, understand the scalability, and we welcome that opportunity and offer it on a regular basis.

And hopefully, we'll get some takers after this call today. So with that, operator, I'd like to turn it over to Q&A.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question will be coming from the line of Elizabeth Wainer of Raymond James.

Elizabeth Wainer: This is Elizabeth Wainer on for Joe Yanchunis. In the prepared remarks, you reiterated your 2026 EPS guidance of $1.70 to $1.80, which implies a step-up in 4Q earnings. Could you walk us through the primary drivers of that improvement, particularly given the sharp decline in gain on sale income? Should we expect the improvement to come primarily from continued NII growth? Or are there other revenue or expense items that should contribute?

Barry R. Sloane: Thanks, Elizabeth. I appreciate that. And I think that if you go back and look at the company's history as a bank, both and as a BDC, there clearly is a seasonal lift to Q4 particularly for lending originations, which do drive the P&L. So I think the concept of us doing more loans in the fourth quarter as well as the growth in net interest income, which our press release indicated probably is growing somewhere around 20% sequentially and certainly bigger numbers on a year-over-year basis. So that's going to start to compound.

A matter of fact, if you look at an SBA loan, we are typically a prime plus 3 lender, which today would get you to about 10% coupon with our cost of funds, call it, 3.6% or 3.65%. So that's about 640 basis points of spread income. So you could sell it for a gain on sale or you could hold it for a 4- or 5-year duration. And over the course of time, you'll probably do better holding it. It does affect the current income in the current quarters. After running the bank and bank holding company model for 3.5 years, we're looking to diversify that a little bit. And I think you'll see that split up going forward.

So I do appreciate the question. Thank you.

Elizabeth Wainer: Yes. That was helpful. And then we've seen some softer small business confidence data recently with inflation and labor costs continuing to pressure business owners. Are you seeing that translate at all into any weaker demand for SBA loans or any change in borrower performance? And are there any particular industries or borrower vintages where you're seeing more stress?

Barry R. Sloane: Yes. To be frank and transparent, we believe that -- and we have adjusted for that in our risk models, in our CECL calculations and in our business valuations, that the uptrend in rates, particularly post-COVID of 3% to 5%. Now we're off of the highs of 5%, but we're still pretty high. And the fact that we've had fairly stubborn inflation for a window of 4 or 5 years has been difficult on us. It's been difficult on older vintage loans. Look, I'm not -- I don't have a crystal ball. I don't necessarily have a forecast.

We just had the Fed Governor who really only controls short rates and not long rates, pretty much left the short rate environment flattish, but they're looking at it. He has some concerns about inflation. And I do think that there has been stress on the historic portfolio. I do believe that once we get through these midterms, I think that oil, which has been the primary driver of inflation, these are all risk factors that are in our Ks and Qs, I point out that please read those risk factors. We'll hopefully move in the right direction, reduce rates, reduce inflation and give us a lift.

We are seeing that at these higher level of rates, it is more challenging to make loans. It's more challenging to grow the business. And therefore, we have muted our origination volumes with the guidance that we've given recently and going forward. And we've also tightened underwriting guidelines historically and are doing so as we speak right now.

Operator: Our next question will come from the line of Emily Lee of Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods.

Emily Noelle Lee: This is Emily Lee on for Tim Switzer. So I was wondering if you could provide some details just on the size and economics of the securitization expected to occur in 1Q '27?

Barry R. Sloane: Yes. We're looking to hopefully do a financing with about $350 million to $400 million of collateral. I think it will be closer to the $400 million. And we'll be looking to issue bonds in the month of January.

Emily Noelle Lee: Great. And then also, could you just elaborate on some of your comments in the release and the prepared remarks regarding exploring all strategic alternatives to help the market recognize true tech value. What exactly strategies are under consideration here?

Barry R. Sloane: Well, I think that from our standpoint, we're in the market every single day. And I wake up with a clear head and a clear vision, and that's been true since we became a public company in September of 2000. We clearly think that there are opportunities within our organization, and we have regular conversations with strategic alliance partners. We have regular conversations with technology solutions providers that are interested in our technology. From time to time, we have people that look at different components of our organization.

And we will always be opportunistic to recognize value and reduce risk for our shareholders depending upon where the market is at, at a given point in time and conditions, which frankly, are pretty volatile and constantly changing. So without putting my finger on any one particular item, I think it just says we are open to having conversations with people about our business, our business model, how it works and where we can derive value and get better value, frankly, than where we're currently receiving in the marketplace, where we think we are dramatically misunderstood, particularly when it comes to the technology platform that we have.

Operator: Our next question will be coming from the line of Christopher Nolan of Ladenburg Thalmann.

Christopher Nolan: Barry, I'll take you up on the tech demo at some point.

Barry R. Sloane: We'd love to do that, and we'll call you and schedule something right after your earnings season. Okay?

Christopher Nolan: Sounds good. Your capital ratios seem to be at a point now where should we expect balance sheet growth to slow in the fourth quarter pending the rate -- securitization?

Barry R. Sloane: Yes, Chris, good question. So when we do the securitization in January, whatever is on the balance sheet will come off the balance sheet. So that will be helpful just from a ratio perspective. And we obviously have to have the right capitalization on the ownership certificate that we'll be holding. I think that we're pretty much where a normal organization would be a bank of our size relative to these ratios. And I think from our standpoint, we're going to take it one quarter at a time, manage the capital, manage the risk and look to continue to be well capitalized given the risk that we have in the marketplace.

Christopher Nolan: Great. And then the boost in the holdco net interest margin, that was related to the strategy of moving more of the 7(a) business to the bank?

Barry R. Sloane: Yes, moving them to the bank. And while they're in that accumulation phase, they're on balance sheets that expands the NIM. I mean, the reality of it is, in the appendix, we have a slide which we refer to NIM and adjusted NIM, adjusted NIM we bring them back on the balance sheet. So we've got a much larger adjusted NIM at the holdco rather than what I would call the non-adjusted NIM because you don't have your off-balance sheet loans as part of that calculation. So if I can quickly go forward here. I think it's -- we'll have to dig it out, but it's one of the slides.

I don't know, Frank, if you know what that slide is, but there's an adjusted NIM calculation, I believe, in the appendix somewhere.

Frank DeMaria: Slide 28. And to that point, Chris, we did have a full quarter of the C&I LA loans that were originated in Q2. And then cost of borrowings as we bring that down, the overall cost of borrowings came down too at the holding company. So that also helped.

Christopher Nolan: Okay. And then final question talks on deposits. One of the issues that you -- not the issue, just growth challenges that you guys experienced is growing your low-cost core deposit base. And over year-to-date, I mean, based on the last Q, it seems like growing that as a percentage of total deposits seems to have stalled excluding savings accounts and CDs and stuff. And I was just trying to get an idea as to -- obviously, you want more core deposits, but is it one of those things where we're going to probably have to wait until back half of 2027 or something?

Barry R. Sloane: Chris, it's a good question. So for all my presidents and COOs and operators who are on the phone, get moving.

Christopher Nolan: There you go, Barry, crack the whip.

Barry R. Sloane: I owe you a high 5 on that. So from real-time payments, insurance, payroll; ham and eggs -- you can't have a payroll account without a depository account. You can't have a merchant account without a depository account. Insurance, buying and moving the premiums right out of the account, particularly as it connects to payroll. So I wish we could move sort of in this really straight line with a lovely slope. And we work on trying to put this into the software and make it more of a function that just kind of goes with the whole thing.

I mean, today, when you go into a Dunkin' Donuts, they jam the hash browns in your bag, whether you want them or not. And I think that: a, through better mentoring, management, and training, and we've recently made some hires, and going forward, through the use of Agentic AI robots, we're going to get this done. It's all there, and it's to be taken. However, it's slower than I'd like, and it's a good point. And yes, we're on the team. You make my job easier, Chris. Thank you.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question will be coming from the line of Crispin Love of Piper Sandler.

Benjamin Graham: This is Ben Graham for Crispin Love. Just looking at the slide deck where you highlight the C&I LA loan metrics, nonperformers increased to $82 million from $46 million last quarter. Just wondering if you could discuss a little deeper the drivers of that increase? And is it concentrated in any type of industry or type of borrower? And then what's your sort of general outlook for credit in the C&I LA loan book in the current environment?

Barry R. Sloane: It's over $1 billion portfolio. And as you ramp up the default curve for business loans, that starts to come into place. And we actually have embedded in our calculations, historic cumulative severity and charge-off number. So I would say there's no specific industry where that might be coming from. It's hard to predict a pandemic. It's hard to predict, not that we have these issues on like taxi cab medallions, where all of a sudden, overnight, an industry gets obliterated by Uber, but it's a diversified portfolio. And when you're charging borrowers at T+ 950 off the curve, the excess servicing spread and the collateral that you get for these loans and the personal guarantees offset that.

Now that this is not similar to a bank portfolio where you're doing residential mortgage loans that might have 10 or 12-year duration at 120 to the curve, and you really don't know what your duration is or car paper, which is really shortened duration. So you wind up getting the benefit from huge spreads with longer duration over time. You get that on the 7(a) portfolio, and you get that on the C&I LA loans. And that actually compounds and offsets that.

So this has been where this becomes really difficult for the community and investors to look at a traditional bank model, take the stuff, put it in a computer on a call report, bang out a report, and that's kind of where we have heartburn. But we'll get through it, and we'll continue to produce the good returns. But no, there's nothing specific. And we've talked about as the portfolio seasons over the course of time, you're going to have these issues.

Operator: I would now like to hand the call back to Barry, for closing remarks.

Barry R. Sloane: Great. Thank you, operator. Greatly appreciate all the analysts' activity and the questions and paying attention to our organization. Once again, I want to thank the management team for delivering a really good quarter and also to Bryce Rowe and Frank for putting together a real strong investor deck. It's not easy. We put a lot of time and effort into this. So -- and also for all the investors for listening in today. Thank you very much. Have a good rest of the afternoon. Take care.

Operator: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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