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 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.

Now Kevin Blair will provide an overview of the quarter.

Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us.

January 1st marked the official close of our merger with Synovus. Rather than slow down, we hit the ground running.

We're choosing to lead. In our first 90 days together, we focused on what has always mattered at Pinnacle: building the best team, delivering exceptional client experiences, and translating that into sustainable, profitable growth.

The early results speak for themselves. For the first quarter, Pinnacle delivered diluted earnings per share of 89 cents, and adjusted diluted EPS of $2.39.

On an organic basis, we generated over $2 billion in loan growth and almost $2 billion in core deposit growth, right in line with our 2026 expectations. The net interest margin expanded into the top half of our target range, and adjusted noninterest revenue grew over 20% versus combined results in the first quarter of 2025.

Moreover, credit remains stable, and we continue to see strength in key metrics and ratios, such as adjusted return on tangible common equity and adjusted tangible efficiency. As expected, our results this quarter included $275 million of merger-related costs.

At the same time, our recruiting engine continues to do what it does best: win. We added 50 experienced revenue producers during the quarter, up 22% on a combined basis from the fourth quarter of 2025, and up 11% on a combined basis from the prior year.

This momentum has carried into April with another 37 new hires or accepted offers. That's not a coincidence.

Great bankers are drawn to environments that are empowering, engaging, and frictionless, making it easier to deliver distinctive, seamless client service. Integration is progressing ahead of plan, and importantly, without losing the soul of what makes Pinnacle work.

Our operating model is in full motion. Leadership accountability is clear.

Technology and systems decisions are largely complete, and we remain firmly on track for operational and brand conversion by March 2027. Most importantly, our clients noticed, positively.

In the latest Coalition Greenwich survey, legacy Pinnacle ranked number one nationally in best bank awards earned, while Synovus ranked sixth. According to Coalition Greenwich, outcomes like this are exceptionally rare in bank mergers, and they don't happen by accident.

We have never viewed this as a merger of two companies. It's a merger of relationships, and that has meant one clear mandate from day one: maintain what clients value and make it better.

These results tell us we're doing both. Our team members felt it, too.

This month, Pinnacle was named number 12 on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, our 10th consecutive year earning that recognition. Through a period of real change, our culture didn't fade, it showed up.

Finally, last month, Pinnacle joined the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index, or BKX. This transition from the KRX places us amongst a select group of banks recognized globally for scale, consistency, and strong returns, and reflects the outstanding reputation we have built with investors.

As we look ahead, we remain firmly focused on executing the Pinnacle playbook. Our priorities are clear, consistent, and unchanged.

We remain focused on top-quartile organic growth, disciplined hiring of experienced revenue producers, and sustained earnings expansion. These priorities are supported by strong risk management and fundamentals built to perform through cycles and deliver superior results over time.

Scale only matters if it makes you better, and this combination does exactly that. With that, I'll turn it over to Jamie to walk through the quarter and the key drivers in more detail.

Jamie?

Thank you, Kevin. Our first quarter sequential and year-over-year comparisons are significantly impacted by the Synovus merger, which closed on January 1st.

As a result, we will make selected references to combined results for legacy Pinnacle and Synovus in prior quarters to give you a clear view of our organic growth in the first quarter. The primary driver between our reported EPS and adjusted EPS in the first quarter was $275 million of merger-related expenses.

Net interest income was $933 million in the first quarter, driven by excellent balance sheet growth. Period-end loans, excluding the day-one purchase accounting loan mark, increased $2.1 billion, or 10% annualized, from the combined firm's fourth quarter 2025.

The majority of the organic loan growth was in C&I credits, with contributions from our geographic markets as well as in our specialty lending lines. Linked-quarter organic core deposit growth was $1.9 billion, or 8% annualized, in the first quarter.

This healthy growth in core deposits was driven by higher interest-bearing demand deposits and money market accounts, and was broad-based across our geographic business units. Total deposit growth was impacted by a strategic reduction of brokered deposits.

The net interest margin expanded to 3.53%, which was in line with our previous guidance of 3.45% to 3.55%, and driven by purchase accounting balance sheet marks and fixed-rate asset repricing. Recall that in January, we repositioned a portion of the legacy Synovus securities portfolio.

These transactions reduced interest rate risk in the securities portfolio, support our level-one HQLA position, and eliminated approximately all of the PAA associated with the securities portfolio. We also took other securities actions during the first quarter to enhance balance sheet liquidity and yield.

On a combined basis, adjusted noninterest revenue increased over 20% year-over-year, and was stable compared to the fourth quarter. Core banking, wealth management, and capital markets fee growth was strong year-over-year.

Income from our equity method investment in BHG was $31 million during the first quarter, in line with expectations. We remained disciplined with noninterest expense control, while continuing to invest in revenue-producing talent and technology, partially offset by the realization of some of our merger-related cost synergies.

Our adjusted tangible efficiency ratio was 51%, in line with expectations for this phase of the merger integration. We incurred $275 million of non-recurring merger expense in the first quarter.

On a combined basis, our non-merger-related linked-quarter growth was driven by higher employment expenses, largely due to seasonally higher personnel costs. Also, on a combined basis, headcount was down 2% sequentially.

We realized the majority of our 2026 merger-related expense synergies in the first quarter. Credit trends remained very healthy in the first quarter.

Net charge-offs were in line with expectations at $49 million, or 23 basis points. This compares to 25 basis points for the combined firm in the fourth quarter, and 19 basis points for the combined firm in 2025.

The nonperforming asset ratio is 0.58%, which was largely impacted by two senior housing relationships that were previously rated, have a specific reserve, and should be resolved this year. The allowance for credit losses ended the first quarter at 1.19%, compared to 1.17% for legacy Pinnacle at the end of December.

This increase in the reserve was driven by net loan growth, a deterioration in the economic forecast, and an increase in individually analyzed loans. These factors were partially offset by a decline in qualitative reserves.

For your reference, we have included slides in the appendix on our non-depository financial institution loan portfolio, and the private credit exposure within this portfolio. As you can see, Pinnacle's NDFI loan exposure is approximately $7.3 billion.

In the first quarter, approximately $700 million of legacy Pinnacle music catalog loans that were previously classified as general C&I credits were reclassified as NDFI. Our Common Equity Tier 1 ratio ended the quarter at 9.8%.

Our intent remains to deploy capital generated through earnings to client growth as we proceed through 2026, while building CET1 to the low end of the range. I will now hand it back to Kevin to review our 2026 financial outlook.

Thank you, Jamie. Pinnacle's differentiated revenue producer hiring model continues to be the engine of our growth, and it performs well through cycles.

That's not a claim, it's a track record. The momentum we're building today through disciplined hiring and client consolidation is what drives our confidence in the path ahead.

Our 2026 outlook is unchanged from what we shared in January, and our first quarter results reinforce it. We expect period-end loan growth of 9% to 11%, excluding the purchase accounting loan mark, versus combined balances at year-end 2025.

We're on track with 3% organic period-end loan growth, excluding the purchase accounting loan mark, in the first quarter. Importantly, our assumptions are not dependent on changes in line utilization rates or moderation in current paydown and payoff activity.

Same model, same results: our bankers win clients, and these clients consolidate to Pinnacle. Total deposits should grow 8% to 10% versus combined year-end 2025 balances.

That growth will be driven by continued recruiting momentum, core commercial client deepening, and the ongoing contribution from our specialty deposit verticals. Our adjusted revenue outlook remains $5 billion to $5.2 billion for the full year.

The net interest margin is expected to be approximately 3.5%, with the marginal benefits of near- to medium-term fixed-rate asset repricing within the legacy Pinnacle portfolio generally offset by a methodical increase in our on-balance sheet liquidity position. Our net interest margin range assumes a forward rate path consistent with current market expectations.

The balance sheet remains approximately 1% asset sensitive to the front end of the curve, and 1.5% asset sensitive to long-term rates. Our goal continues to be towards managing a relatively neutral posture for the foreseeable horizon.

We continue to expect approximately $1.1 billion in adjusted noninterest revenue this year, driven by sustained execution in treasury management, capital markets, and wealth management. This guidance also includes a projection for BHG investment income of approximately $105 to $115 million for 2026.

The slight headwind relative to our prior estimate is not a reflection of BHG's core performance. Rather, this is part of a strategic effort to further optimize their funding and delivery platforms, a decision which presents a modest near-term revenue recognition headwind, but which we believe best positions BHG to enhance long-term profitability and enterprise value.

We're managing for the right outcome, not just the next quarter. Our adjusted noninterest expense forecast remains in the range of $2.675 to $2.775 billion.

We expect to realize approximately 40%, or $100 million, of our merger-related savings this year. Underlying tangible expense growth is driven by revenue producer hiring from the back half of 2025, continued 2026 recruiting, real estate buildout to support market expansion, and normal inflationary items.

We now estimate $400 to $450 million of the $720 million in non-recurring merger-related and LFI charges will be incurred this year, excluding merger-related equity acceleration costs. We continue to operate in a constructive credit environment.

Net charge-offs are expected to be in the range of 20 to 25 basis points for the full year, consistent with combined company performance in 2025. The fundamentals underpinning that outlook are sound, and we see nothing on the horizon that changes our view.

Our focus for capital management for the rest of 2026 remains on managing our CET1 ratio towards our target of 10.25%, while continuing to prioritize deployment for core client growth. As it relates to the most recent capital NPR, we estimate the proposal could have a 60 basis point positive impact to our CET1 ratio.

We continue to expect an adjusted effective tax rate of approximately 20% to 21% for the year. In summary, Pinnacle is navigating this year from a position of strength.

While some question the pace, complexity, or disruption inherent in a merger of this size, the first quarter delivered exactly what we said it would, and in a meaningful way. Top-quartile revenue growth, expanding merger synergies, and disciplined execution across every geography and specialty banking unit reinforce our conviction in what lies ahead.

Integration is progressing, the team is performing, and the model built over the past 25 years is precisely what this environment rewards. We are only one quarter in, ahead of pace, and exceeding expectations, but make no mistake: this is just the opening act.

The model works, the team is motivated, and we're locked in on proving that this is built to last. With that, operator, let's transition to the Q&A portion of today's call.

Thank you. Good morning.

Just wondering if you guys could drill down a bit into the outlook for loan and deposit growth, the things that you've seen so far this quarter that give you confidence in both. Maybe just a reminder how much is driven by the seasoning of hires that have already been done and how much is coming from other factors.

John, it's a great question. As we've talked about, the first quarter I think answered the question of whether the combined companies can continue to grow.

What gave me a great deal of confidence was the diversification across the geographies and the specialties. The momentum that we continue to see in our pipelines in all of those areas is what gives me a great deal of confidence in the trajectory, that this is not just a one-quarter or two-quarter growth story.

As you recall, the combined companies back in fourth quarter also grew double digits. We had about $4.2 billion in funded production this past quarter, as you saw in the deck.

It was largely across all of our geographies and our specialty units. That gives me a great deal of comfort that it's not coming from one asset class or one area.

We know that the bankers that we've hired in previous years continue to generate a lot of that growth. Also, we know that some of the hires that we've made this year, the 50 that we talk about, are already hitting the ground running.

For me, the pipelines are robust. The combination, the benefits from previous hiring as well as the cross-selling opportunities that we have from introducing each of the organizations' capabilities to the other client base, that's what gives me confidence.

You saw we maintained our guidance. Same thing on the deposit side: it's coming from the new hires, it's coming from some of our deposit specialties, and again, it's fairly broad-based.

That again gives us confidence that we reiterated the guidance for the year.

Great. Maybe just a follow-up on the deposits for Jamie.

The core deposit growth was plus six, and the total was plus six and the core was plus eight. You mentioned a little bit of strategic reduction of brokered.

Could you give us a little color on that, and do you see the core deposit growth kind of accelerating up a bit as you go through the year?

John, as we look into 2026, we do expect to see deposit growth be more back-end loaded as we look to the seasonals and the growth, as Kevin mentioned, from the hires. The first quarter was very strong.

Growing core deposits at $1.9 billion, pretty much in line with loan growth, gives us a lot of flexibility. What did we do with that flexibility?

We reduced our broker deposits. Basically, it was just a cost-optimization play and wanted to reduce costs where we could.

Okay. Thank you.

Hey, good

morning.

First question is just any change in the go-to-market strategy on either side of the bank, and just wondering what the reception has been early on from any changes made?

Go-to-market strategy, as we've talked about, Timur, it's really moving to the Pinnacle model. What that means is that we're adopting the rapid hiring of revenue producers.

I think what you can see this quarter is about 40% of the producers that were hired were hired in what I would consider the legacy Synovus footprint. That is about a 50% increase over what we would have done the same period last year.

The model of hiring has been rolled out and is actually being executed within that Synovus footprint. The model that we're executing on the Pinnacle side has to do with autonomy, a decentralized framework that allows specialty bankers to support the local geographies.

That's been rolled out. Our bankers on the legacy Synovus side love it.

It quite frankly is what they were used to years ago within Synovus, it wasn't a great deal of change. I would tell you that the engagement level with our frontline team members is very high.

I think you can see that with the results. This could have been a quarter where people were focused on distractions and talking about the merger and changes, but reality is everyone continued to serve their clients and generate the growth that we thought they could generate.

I would say the model changed a little bit from the Synovus side, but it was well received, and it's already in the process of being well executed. On the Pinnacle side, really no changes.

We, as I said, we've kept the incentive structure, we've kept the hiring model, we've kept the decentralized geographic framework. There shouldn't be a lot of changes on that side.

Great. Then one on expenses as my follow-up.

We got the guide for this year. I'm just wondering as we go out into next year and we get the majority of the cost saves starting to hit, just how do those flow through?

Are you expecting there to be net reduction of expenses as you get the majority of the cost saves, or are we in growth mode where investment into the franchise is going to maybe eat into some of those and instead then drive increased expenses, maybe at a decelerated growth rate, though?

Timur, as we look at 2027, there are two components, and you hit on both. First is we will continue to operate in this model where we expect to be winning with recruiting, bringing bankers over.

We expect that to continue. You should look at the historical kind of core NIE growth rate of legacy Pinnacle, and that's in line with how we're looking at longer-term.

For 2027, you could see that be in the high single digits. Then from there, you back out the synergies.

We've said our target for 2027 is 75% of the overall synergies, going from the 40% to the 75% will offset a portion of that core NIE spend, but just a portion of it.

Morning.

Morning, John.

On the loan front, I think your organic growth was pretty solid in the quarter against your 9% to 11% guide. Could you give us a little bit more detail in terms of what you're seeing in terms of credit spreads and new money loan yields?

Are you seeing any competitive pressure there? Then also on the lending front, if you can give us a little bit more granularity what you're seeing in terms of loan demand and line utilization in the quarter, how that's faring?

Thanks.

John, I'll start with the end. We actually didn't see a lot of change in line utilization this quarter.

It was actually down a little bit. We did put on about $8.2 billion of commitments versus just $4.2 billion of funded loans.

I think you could see some fund-ups happen over the next several quarters based on this quarter's production, but the growth this quarter was not driven from line utilization increases. When we look at loan pricing this quarter, our yields came in right around 6.20% on new loans, and I think that's within our expectations and essentially flat with kind of where the combined companies' fourth quarter experience would have been.

I don't think there's any surprises. I've heard a lot on the deposit front as it relates to competition and hyper-competitive environment.

We came in at 2.62% roughly on production there. It was up about 6 basis points from last quarter when you combine the organization.

That was really more just movement into the money market category. I think in general, when we analyze the competitive landscape, not only on loans, but also on deposits, I think it's pretty rational.

I think what's different is that a lot of folks expected some of these promotional rates to come down, and they haven't come down. They've remained fairly stable.

It's a competitive world we're living in, but we're not seeing anything that's irrational or anything that we can't compete with. We feel pretty good about where we are at a pricing standpoint, and there's nothing in that competitive data that would make us change our outlook on NIM or on growth.

Got it. All right, thanks, Kevin.

Then, appreciate the color on the competitive dynamics on both sides of the balance sheet. Separately, on the broader growth strategy, and I certainly appreciate your commitment to the 9% to 11% loan growth and the 8% to 10% deposit growth and the whole growth strategy and the hiring behind it.

In this backdrop, certainly some uncertainty out there, if the macro backdrop does weaken and you tighten standards on the credit front, what does that mean for your growth expectations? How do you expect that you could modify and adapt to the backdrop and still, would you still be confident in these targets on the lending side?

Thanks.

John, that's the beauty of this model is that a lot of the growth that we're talking about is predicated on bankers bringing their books over. We put some slides out there in the past laying out the book of business that we expect to build just based on bankers that have already been hired.

That still exists, and you could say that on the Pinnacle side, there's $15 to $20 billion of growth embedded in people who are on the team today, and they will bring clients over, build their books to where they used to be, where we've seen all the rest of the bankers build their books. That's not economic dependent.

Sure, a stronger economy is a positive, stronger growth is a positive, being in the Southeast is a positive, but our growth is more predicated on that hiring than anything else. In that number, the 15 to 20, that doesn't include the prior Synovus hires, and that may be another $5 billion on top of that.

We see a lot of growth just from bankers bringing over books of business, building their books, and it's more about that than it is the general volatility of the economy.

Jamie, to add on to that, John, what we do, as we look at all of our transaction activity, we analyze pipelines, but we also survey over 400 commercial clients every quarter. We also look at the actual cash inflows and outflows of 24 industry categories.

Looking at that survey this quarter, as Jamie said, we don't rely on the underlying economic growth to drive it, but the bottom line is, I think we're operating in a great footprint and our clients are remaining constructive even in this environment. Now, not euphoric, but they're durable, and I think they're adapting and finding efficiencies, and they're leaning in a little bit.

We saw that the overall sentiment of our client base hasn't really changed even with all this geopolitical risk and some of the uncertainty that's out there. I think that's gives us confidence that the economy at this point won't serve as a headwind.

Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate it.

Hey, good morning.

Good morning.

Just wanted to go back to the net interest margin. When we think about the purchase accounting benefit and then just the loan and deposit growth dynamic, when you look at the first quarter growth that came on the balance sheet, is that around the same ballpark?

I'm just trying to figure out what the resiliency of that 3.5%-ish margin is in a world where there's no big change in the interest rate backdrop. Maybe tied to that, Jamie, what's your sense of noninterest-bearing deposits as a mix of total changing from here?

Do you see that staying flat, going up, or going down? Thank you.

Ebrahim, it's a great question. As we look at growth, kind of circling back to the prior question, the growth in core deposits is a huge positive in the first quarter, tying that out with loan growth.

As we look forward, we expect to see strong core deposit growth continuing relatively in line with loan growth, a little bit behind. That'll help us out in the funding mix.

In the first quarter, Kevin mentioned loan production rate was 6.2%. On the deposit side, it was 2.62%.

You think about that margin, it's about 3.6% between loan yields and deposit costs of just the growth in the first quarter. Now, you can't use that and just say, okay, well, that's actually net accretive for the rest of the year if you continue to do that because there are other things that go into that.

You'll see us do some actions as we go through the year for liquidity management that'll be a little bit of a headwind to the margin. I think the right way to look at it longer term, kind of when we get beyond 2026, is you think about the legacy Pinnacle margin, which was approximately 3.3%, just below pre-merger.

That's probably at a decent margin for future incremental growth. If you use that as a proxy for incremental margin of growth beyond 2026, then what you see is slight, very slight headwind to the margin in the out years.

That's generally how I'm thinking about it. For this year, we're saying a 3.50% margin for the full year 2026, coming off the 3.53% in the first quarter.

I will just say that in the first quarter, there are a couple positives that will not reoccur in the second quarter, and that's day count is a little positive, and also our securities repositioning in the month of January was a slight positive to the margin. A good baseline for Q1, adjusted for those, is within 3.50% area.

Basically what we're saying is that's a good full-year number as well. With regard to NIB, we do expect that to remain relatively stable at around 20% of deposits.

Got it. That is good color.

Thank you, Jamie. Just one quick follow-up.

I believe when we did the deal, you talked about a lot of growth coming from banker hiring. Are there opportunities given the larger balance sheet size to bring on more wallet of existing relationships which are on the balance sheet, and where you could see a bit more loan growth beyond what's coming from the hiring?

Is that something we should be thinking about? Is that a real opportunity?

Ebrahim, I'll start with some successes we had in the first quarter. We had six capital markets deals that totaled $10 million in revenue that basically their lead arranger fees, investment banking advisory.

These are some of the benefits: when you have more balance sheet, more clients, you get more of this type of business. That's fee revenue, it's not exactly what you were asking.

That's the type of business that, as a $120 billion bank, that we're going to see more and more of. We're really pleased to see that in the first quarter post-close, to hit the ground running with that.

Yes, it's obviously we can have bigger hold limits, things like that on the balance sheet, but in all aspects, we're just more relevant to the larger clients here in the Southeast.

Ebrahim, you recall, we put $100 to $130 million in revenue synergies, and one of the categories was relationship expansion. A lot of that had to do with being able to offer the other client base some of the services that the company would bring to the combined firm.

This quarter, equipment finance, we were able to put up about $120 million of guidance facilities in the legacy Synovus footprint coming from the Pinnacle equipment finance team. On the dealer finance side, we have about $650 million in the pipeline coming from the legacy Synovus footprint.

Asset-based lending, we have about $200 million of new market deals that are in process. Then in capital markets, we were able to do $110 million in multi-currency syndications, which we wouldn't have been able to do in legacy Pinnacle.

You're already starting to see, as Jamie mentioned, on fee income and lending, the fruits of bringing the companies together, but we're in the early innings there. I think it's going to continue to drive growth, but that would obviously be embedded in our expectations for this year.

Got it. Thank you both.

Great. Thanks.

Good morning, everyone. I wanted to touch on the recruiting strategy.

Very good momentum here at 87 or so year to date. I was wondering if there is upside to that 250 target for 2026.

Then, are you still getting the same economics on these hires? I just noticed the expense guide, while it's the same, it does imply a bit of a step-up going forward versus flat previously.

Casey, I don't want to bet against ourselves and up our targets today, but I, as I said, I feel really great about what we've been able to accomplish in the first quarter, not just because of the numbers, but I think, as many people were questioning whether we could continue to hire with a merger weighing on some of these decisions where bankers may be waiting, watching, and taking a pause. I think first quarter shows that the model itself is the attraction point, and the merger has not changed that.

Could we go over that number? Sure.

We're still focused on where we are today. You saw the 50 that we've hired, another 37 that have already accepted offers.

I think 22 of those individuals are already in the bank and have started working here. I'm super excited about it.

As I mentioned on my earlier comment, the fact that when we look at some of our legacy Synovus leaders, they've already started to execute on the model, seeing a 50% increase there. In terms of the economics, I think we go into this expecting similar economics.

I can't tell you whether the 50 we've hired to date are going to exceed or fall below that, but what we've been seeing and tracking gives me a great deal of confidence and no change into what those individuals will bring the bank. It goes back to what Jamie said earlier: the model isn't just about hiring.

We're not bringing over people using headhunters. We're recruiting people that have worked with other Pinnacle team members, so that there's a great deal higher probability of success because we know what their work was at their previous institution.

I think that you'll continue to see that growth. Jamie mentioned earlier $15 to $20 million billion of embedded growth on the Pinnacle side.

Let's say another 5 from the legacy Synovus hires. I'm incredibly bullish on our ability to continue to add.

What's interesting to me when I look at it across the geography, it came from every geography and it came from every specialty: 28 geographic hires, 22 specialty hires. I think there's a lot of additional hires that will happen this year.

Great. Just switching to capital, is there just some updated thoughts on potential BHG monetization or making use of the Greystar JV with credit risk transfers to speed up the CET1 rebuild?

No update on the BHG side as far as a liquidity event. I will say that we spend a lot of time with that team, and we really do believe in their strategy going forward of remixing their distribution.

We think that it'll improve long-term profitability as well as improve enterprise value. We appreciate that partnership.

On capital ratios, starting here at 9.83% on CET1, our intention is to build capital as we go through the year to get to the low end of that target range, get to the 10, 10.25% area. There's a chance that we would use some sort of a CRT or SRT strategy to help with capital, but it would have to be the right situation and the right cost of capital.

Right now, we're not really contemplating anything in that regard, but that is definitely a tool in the toolkit should we find the right fit at the right cost. We'll continue to evaluate those options as we go through the year.

Thank you.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

Maybe just to touch on the revenue synergies slide. Obviously understand that all the ranges provided were reiterated, but any sense on what areas we could see progress maybe a little bit sooner versus later in that two- to three-year dynamic?

Then, I guess just from the outside looking in, how do we get comfortable, because it's always hard to see, I think, from the outside looking in, that you're actually realizing those revenue synergies? Any sort of comfort there would be helpful.

Thanks.

Thanks, Michael. I'm glad I brought it up because I think the context does matter here, because we are only one quarter in and we're still operating on two separate systems, which creates some barriers to be able to offer the other organization's products.

I think where you'll see the early wins are more concentrated in the accelerated RM hiring, which was one of the areas that we thought we would see early wins, and then the specialty cross-sell pollination that I mentioned earlier, whether that's equipment finance, asset-based lending, dealer finance, family office. Those sort of things we can offer without being on the same platform.

Still feel very comfortable with the $100 to $130 million. I think if you remember in one of the industry conferences we were at, we said we expected a modest, I think $20 million in 2026.

What we're seeing in our pipelines and the opportunities there, I think we'll be able to achieve that within this year's numbers. We'll be very transparent.

As we get to those numbers, we'll share where they're coming from, and we'll go back and show you those relative to what our targets were so that you can see the pull-through. I would just say, one quarter in, we're still on two systems, the synergy story is coming to life.

I think when we put the combined toolkit in front of our bankers on one platform, these numbers will really begin to accelerate.

Very helpful. Appreciate that, Kevin.

Then maybe just as my follow-up, obviously really good start on the hiring front, as has been brought up a couple times here. I think in these types of deals, though, we always worry about retention, and I think that was one of the key attributes of Pinnacle over a very long time period was just the high level of retention.

Can you just talk to that there? Because, obviously, it seems like the backdrop for hiring, everybody's hiring at this point, and more so than they have in the past couple years at least.

Maybe you can just talk to some of the retention of lenders and associates, and how that should trend moving forward. Thanks.

Michael. Internally, to your point, not only do we set the goals for hiring, we also set a retention goal for voluntary turnover at 7%.

That was the combined retention number of both organizations. You could argue that's a fairly aggressive target given that we're going through a merger.

Through the first 90 days of the year, we're right on that target. Yes, we've had a couple folks leave the organization.

A lot of them retired. I think of our producers that have left, almost 20% were due to retirement.

I think we're ahead of the game there. As once you pay out bonuses, you generally see a higher level of turnover.

That percentage that we have to this point that's been annualized, we would expect to continue to decline from here. I think others have said this merger would be a huge opportunity to poach Pinnacle team members, and that just hasn't happened.

I think, again, it has everything to do with the model and the fact that these team members are deeply engaged in our company, they are successful, and they're not searching out another opportunity. That's, I think, what's different from what you've seen from other mergers.

All right, great. Appreciate the color.

I'll step back.

Thanks. Good morning.

I guess sticking on the hiring question, are you at this point looking to expand into any new geographies, or is most of the hiring just getting more concentration in markets you're already in?

Jared, no new expansion markets at this point. If you recall, we recently expanded into the National Capital Region within the last five years.

We continue to hire in that Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia market. It's continued to be a great growth engine for us.

That has expanded down into Richmond. We're making hires in Central Virginia, and that is a growth engine.

I would tell you that this quarter, the state of Florida has been our best growth, both in kind of the northern, Central Florida as well as South Florida. I think that's a real opportunity because, as we've shared in the past, even though we have a strong presence there, we believe we can add a lot of density into each of those markets.

Then more recently, Pinnacle did a new market in Mobile, Alabama, and that's been a real growth engine for us. I would tell you, we will continue to focus on the nine states and the District of Columbia that we're in today, and there is lots of opportunity within those.

The pipelines that we have today are largely focused on those markets.

Thanks. Then just as a follow-up, I know the systems conversion is still a little ways out, but I guess how are you looking at AI, and maybe seeing how that could change your ultimate either tech spend or tech opportunity as you're moving towards this broader tech integration?

Look, number one, we're still focused on March 2027. We know that conversion will be the first time that our clients will feel the impact of this merger.

We're progressing on plan, and we're in a good place to be able to have all the systems converted. We've decided over 250 technology platforms, and now we've gone through and built processes to be able to complement those technology decisions.

AI is something that we've been deploying for some time. I think we're kind of through the pilot phase.

If you may recall, we rolled something out at Synovus I guess a year ago that was called ChatPFP, which is kind of an internal policies, forms, and procedures platform. I think we've answered now 18,000 banker questions, and I think we saved over 3,000 hours from the work that we've done there.

We also have 13 portfolio initiatives that are in flight, and I would tell you that our AI focus is around three things: banker and team member productivity, where we can use it to not replace team members, but to make them more effective at doing their job; number two, credit intelligence, where we can use it to really reduce the time that it takes from client application to closing; and then third, leveraging the capabilities with our business partners so that we can use the AI technology that they're deploying. We will leverage some of the AI tools as we do conversion.

We've used it on process re-engineering, we'll use it on some of the coding that we have to do. It is fully embedded in our culture today, and we're rolling out lots of tools across the organization to help all of our bankers be more effective.

Great. Thanks.

Hi, everyone. A follow-up on capital.

I know you have the buyback authorization in place, but Jamie, is the expectation to get to the low end of the 10.25% CET1 target before you begin or contemplate any amount of buybacks?

Tony, that's our plan. When you think about our capital accretion, it remains similar to what we discussed last quarter.

The capital waterfall in today's earnings deck is a pretty good illustration of that. We have 38 basis points of capital generated in the first quarter from earnings, and then we deployed 8 basis points of that to our common dividends.

When you look at the remaining 30 basis points, that is what gets either delivered to clients or is either used to grow capital ratios or to be deployed to something like share purchases. In the first quarter, we deployed 24 basis points to clients.

Now, that was a little bit higher than what we said in January when we said that we would expect to deploy about 20 basis points, but truthfully, that resulted from the growth in commitments more than the growth in loans. As we look forward, I think that's a healthy way to look at capital accretion each quarter.

We still think that there are many scenarios where RWA growth consumes about 20 basis points, but you could see quarters like this quarter where it's a little bit higher than 20.

Okay. Then on slide 27 in the appendix, what drove the decline in the total loan mark to $675 million, and the year-one purchase accounting now expected at $90 million, which I think is at the low end of the previous range?

Thank you.

Tony, that's largely driven by rates. There's a little bit of a shift in the valuation due to kind of where the marks came out by loan product.

That was really just a rate story. What I'll say on the PAA and amortization going forward, 70% of that is in residential mortgages.

You look at those residential mortgages, the average rate is around four and a quarter, the average underlying loan rate, and we're assuming about a 7% prepay rate on those mortgages. The volatility around PAA amortization should be relatively light, unless rates decline significantly.

That's generally how you should think about the PAA amortization from here and the valuation.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks. Appreciate it.

I wanted to go back to BHG really quickly. I think, Kevin, you mentioned some of the change in guide was relative to adapting funding mechanisms.

I'm just curious, looking at the slide, it looks like originations were up year-over-year. Could that revenue be a little bit more episodic around securitizations, or kind of how should we think about the cadence of BHG and kind of what that looks like longer term?

The BHG outlook remains strong. As I mentioned earlier, it's a great partnership.

The team down there just continues to dominate in consumer lending, and we're pretty pleased with everything they're doing. When you look at the production in 2026, it's a strong increase from 2025.

The real change is the distribution. The way to think about that from our perspective is that the price received on the loans of bank partnerships is just simply a lot higher than the price received on securitization or whole loan sales.

The reason you would choose the lower price, though, is because you don't have any ongoing calls for voluntary repurchases, things like that. We think that the right strategy is to take the lower premium today by selling more into securitizations and loan sales to asset managers, and improve long-term profitability.

It also should improve enterprise value. The reason for that is it gives people more certainty into that forward earnings profile when it's just based on the production and the price of production of the loan sales.

We're really pleased with the strategy. We look forward to seeing it play out, but it will result in lower fee revenue for us in 2026, but it's the right long-term move.

Got it. Great color there.

Then just one other to piggyback on all the hiring questions, I know you said Mobile, a newer market. How long do you think today the existing footprint can kind of drive this level of growth?

If you had to expand markets, is it fair to think of you guys moving west slightly with all the dislocation that's occurred in those markets?

For me, Stephen, for the foreseeable future, there's so much opportunity. When we look at the market share data and you look at the Greenwich data, look, we haven't talked about that today, but for legacy Pinnacle to be number one in the country in the Net Promoter Score, and legacy Synovus to be number six in the country, it shows you that we have two strong organizations coming together creating a loyal client base.

When we look at the data in the markets we serve today, the only thing that people are higher than Pinnacle on is market share. The market share that some of these bigger banks have, they're also those same banks that have very low Net Promoter Scores.

Our opportunity to hire in the existing markets and to take share from those bigger institutions is right in front of us, and we're doing it every day. That's going to fuel the growth.

As it relates to expanding into new markets, what I think we've proven out is it's less about choosing a market and trying to then go and find talent. What we've done is we find the talent, regardless of where the market is.

If you get the right leader, that person will be able to bring over the right team and we'll be able to grow by rolling out that Pinnacle model.

Great reminder there. Thanks for the color.

Good morning. Just on credit, the allowance for credit losses during the quarter, I wanted to see if you can unpack a few of the things: the deterioration in economic forecasts, the increase in the individually analyzed loans, and just the decline in qualitative reserves that you show on slide 34 of the deck.

Could you just unpack the drivers a little bit here for us?

It's a great question. When you look at the economic impact, a couple things were happening there.

One, we obviously use the updated forecasts from Moody's, but as you can see in the appendix, we also adjusted the weightings of the scenarios. The reason we did that was because of the economic uncertainty, everything that's going on in the world.

We just wanted to put a little heavier weighting on slow growth and basically just acknowledge what's going on out there. That drove the change in the economic outlook.

Then what was rest of your question?

Qualitative. The

qualitative reserves, obviously we have those in there. Each quarter it's fairly significant amount of the allowance.

Those ebb and flow based on the differences or how we see the outlook of individual portfolios. That came down this quarter based on us just seeing a little bit reduced risk in some of those portfolios that we had allocated.

We had it in multifamily and a few others, and our outlook has improved on those areas, and we reduced the qualitative accordingly.

Great. Just my follow-up, in case I missed this, there's no change in the full-year guide of the $1.1 to $1.15 billion of the adjusted fee income despite the reductions in BHG, like you mentioned, from optimizing their funding.

Just what areas helped offset this? Jamie, you mentioned some of the capital markets deals.

I'm sticking something from there. Just any thoughts on what the offsets were?

When you look at the rest of the year, first I'll kind of give a starting point on the first quarter. You had core banking fees up 11%, wealth up 14%, capital markets more than doubled when you look at year-over-year comparisons.

We have great momentum to start the year. As we look forward, we really expect to see that continue.

Embedded in that guidance is mid- to upper-single-digit growth in each of those categories. We expect that in core banking fees, in wealth, and in capital markets.

Then that will be offset partially by that reduction in BHG revenue.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thanks. Good morning.

It was nice to see the average earning assets ahead of expectations. Can you give any update to how you're thinking about the build in cash and securities as we move through the year?

Catherine, in the first quarter, you saw us grow the securities portfolio by about $750 million. You should expect to see us continue growing the securities portfolio as we go through the year.

We could end the year up $1.5 to $2 billion. Longer-term, I would expect to see the securities portfolio grow to 19%, 20% of assets over time, and you'll just continue to see us build towards those levels.

Great. Then maybe one follow-up on just the reserve question.

You give your net charge-off guidance of 20 to 25 basis points. As we think about the reserve, do you view that as more stable, bias upward or bias lower just as you kind of sit here at the current reserve and how you're thinking forward about the credit risk?

Thanks.

A lot of that depends on the economic outlook. As we've just discussed, we increase the weighting to slower growth, and if the economic outlook improves, well, that would be a tailwind to reducing the allowance.

We believe, outside of that, we expect it to be relatively stable. You didn't ask the question, but, as I think about it, provision expense, you should continue to see what you saw this quarter, outside of the change in the ratio.

You should expect to see provision about $20 million higher than charge-offs, just due to strong loan growth and providing for that loan growth.

All right, that's great. Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions.

Overall growth was stronger than expected in the first quarter. You previously mentioned earlier this year that the first half might be slower than the second half.

Is it fair to say that growth could be more consistent through the year than originally expected?

There are seasonals in the second half of the year that we would expect to play out. We view the first quarter as being ahead of schedule.

It's a strong quarter for us with regards to growth in both loans and core deposits. We're going to strive to maintain that momentum, but this is definitely being ahead of schedule.

Great. Thanks for that.

Then back on to capital, can you talk about the Basel III endgame and the impact that could have on your capital ratios, and how you might deploy any incremental capital that may result from that?

That's the question of the day from my perspective. Strategically, the proposed rules can really work to our advantage.

The impact of AOCI inclusion is fairly immaterial to us at these rate levels, but the changes in risk weightings further enhance the attractiveness of our core client business: C&I lending and commercial real estate lending relationships. We feel that we are very well-positioned for this, both in our go-to-market strategy and our balance sheet management.

Of the estimated 60 basis points benefit in the risk-weighting asset changes, about 35 to 40 basis points comes from commercial lending, and about between 10 to 15 basis points comes from residential mortgages. We await the finalization of these of the rules.

We look forward to getting through the comment period and implementing the in the new regime, because we think it'll just really only enhance what we do and how we serve our clients. Your question on the incremental capital, we're not going to make any decisions today based on this until we get to to the final rules and and the rules implemented.

It's definitely going to, definitely looks like it's going to be a positive to our capital ratios.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Thanks. Good morning.

I had a clarifying question about the NIM roll-forward in the deck. It included securities mark benefit of 7 or 8 basis points.

I'm just curious how that works if it was 9 it was 9 basis points. With the bond repositioning in the first quarter, I'm surprised that it was reflected quite that way.

Could you talk about that item versus kind of ongoing securities yield in the wake of the repositioning?

That was going to come through one way or another. By doing the repositioning, it came through in NII instead of PAA.

That's really basically at close, we marked that book to market, the securities portfolio. That's really just a placement on the income statement difference between the two.

I think that's a testament to the permanence of PAA when it's rate-driven. Basically, with loans and securities, you can make that PAA go away and turn it into NII by executing a market trade.

We feel really good about the future of NII from the marking of the Synovus balance sheet, and I think that just kind of shows the longevity of it. Really, one way or another, that was going to be in the margin in the first quarter, but the trades just made it traditional NII.

Okay. That was just the margin benefit and not necessarily the accretion.

Could you give us, Jamie, just what the kind of net accretion benefit was in the quarter overall?

The way to think about that is, securities accretion, PAA accretion, would have been $25 million a quarter. It's kind of a good number.

If you look at loan accretion, it's about $20 million a quarter. That's again, as I mentioned earlier, that's 70% of that is coming from residential mortgages.

That's the general accretion that's in the margin each quarter.

Okay. Thank you.

Good morning. Can you talk about the NDFI business line in terms of is there an upper bound to where you want that to go over time?

I appreciate the disclosure you gave on NDFI, too.

Chris, you saw it on slide 37, it's 9%, or $7 billion. I think what's important, you see the headlines, only about a billion seven in private credit, less than 2%.

Look, just think about the backdrop. I know the media and investors are painting this picture of all NDFI exposure being the same, and I just don't believe that to be accurate, and it's not how we manage the book.

Where we do have exposure, our production is structural. We sit on the very top of the capital structure, senior secured, backed by first-lien loans.

We largely have effective advance rates, when you factor in the liquidity and the eligibility buffers, of around 50%. We are well-structured there.

The biggest part of that book for us is our structured lending division, which is about $3.4 billion. We've been operating that for the last seven years, and that group has not produced a single charge-off and hasn't had an NPA since 2019.

I think they execute with a great deal of credit and operational discipline. I don't believe that there's an upper bound.

We believe that each loan that we're bringing on today is well-structured, secured, and performing well. Like any asset class, once you start getting to 10% or larger, I think you have to start thinking about whether you have concentration risk, and so we would look at that.

The great thing about this book is, as you heard Jamie, even the catalog music business, these loans, although they are contained in one bucket, they're very different and they're very granular. I would hate to set a target for something based on an asset category that quite frankly has different underlying structural components that are not homogeneous in nature, and hence are not likely to perform similarly through different economic scenarios.

No, that makes sense. Thank you for the color there.

Then the reserve assigned to these is just part of the general C&I bucket, correct?

That's correct.

Great. Thank you for taking all of our questions this morning.

Thank you, Chris.

Hi. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my questions. I guess first, do you expect to have a Visa gain, and would there be any impact to capital from that?

No. No, we do not.

Okay. Then second, if I could just follow up on the retention question.

Do you think you'll provide that retention number going forward? Is there a period where you might expect sort of elevated churn in the legacy Synovus employee base over the next, say, 12 to 18 months?

Look, we're a transparent organization. We'd be happy to provide that data.

The real answer to that is this last quarter. If you have folks that don't want to be part of the new company, first quarter is the period in which they would have self-selected based on the fact that bonuses are paid, and generally that's when recruiting picks up.

I would tell you kind of the worst is behind us, and the fact that we're on track tells me that it should only get better from here. We will be extremely transparent on that.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Matthew. Thank you all for your thoughtful questions and for your continued investment in what we are building here.

I think, one quarter in as a combined company, the results speak for themselves: loan growth, deposit growth, margin expansion, recruiting momentum, and a culture that just didn't survive the merger, it's strengthening and scaling. That doesn't happen by accident.

It happens because of the model, the people, and a strong commitment from leadership to doing the right thing. Doing things the right way matters.

While some of our industry peers go through mergers and they've leaned in on things like elevated promotional deposit rates as a big client retention tool, that's not how we operate. Our retention strategy has one solid foundation, and that's talent.

The best bankers attract the best clients, the best clients stay. It's that simple, and it works.

People are what makes the difference. What the first quarter tells me is that we didn't merge into mediocrity.

The Pinnacle model is fully intact. We're actively expanding, we're producing exactly the results it was built to produce.

What particularly energizes me, as I said earlier, is the speed at which our Synovus leaders have embraced and applied the Pinnacle hiring model, up 50% year-over-year. As excited as I am about the progress we've made, we're not perfect.

There have been moments in this integration where we've moved too fast, we've had to course correct, or we didn't have the immediate answer. That will continue, and undertaking of this size doesn't come without its share of bumps, and I wouldn't suggest otherwise.

I'd tell you this: the wins have greatly and consistently outweighed the misses, and we learn from every one of them. One quarter will not define us, but it will set a standard that we intend to exceed, and we're not done proving it.

Culture is what I think about every single day because results follow it, not the other way around. The culture's holding: the recruiting momentum, the systems conversion ahead, the revenue synergies being locked in, and the client relationships deepening across our nine states, those are the chapters that are still to be written.

We have shown that this model can do what it does and do it well. The best of what this firm has to offer is still in front of us.

Before I close, I want to speak directly to our team members, because no number in this presentation, no metric we reported today happens without you. Many of you didn't ask for this merger.

Many of you had real concerns about your role, your market, your clients, and your future. Those concerns were valid, and I never want to minimize them.

Change of this magnitude is hard, and you faced it head-on. You showed up, you served your clients without missing a beat, you welcomed new team members you've never met, and you made them feel like they belonged.

That kind of character cannot be manufactured, it cannot be taken for granted. Your efforts, your passion, your dedication is exactly why I have no doubt about where this firm is headed.

You're the reason it works, and I'm deeply grateful. I also want to recognize Jennifer Demba, our Director of Investor Relations, who will be retiring in June.

Jennifer, over the past three years, you've been an extraordinary partner, elevating our investor relationships and leaving the function better than you found it. Your impact on this organization will be felt long after June.

Thank you, and we wish you nothing but success in this well-deserved next chapter of your life. As we wrap up today's call, I'll end where we started.

We entered 2026 with a promise to deliver for our shareholders, our clients, and our communities, and most importantly, our team. One quarter in, we've delivered.

We did exactly what we said we would do, and this is just the opening act. The model is proven, the team is unified, and we are locked in on executing every promise we have made.

We look forward to seeing many of you at upcoming conferences, and with that, Matthew, we can conclude today's call.