Bank7 (BSVN) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Century Merger, Loan Growth and NIM

Bank7 Corp. (NASDAQ: BSVN) emphasized strong organic loan production, disciplined pricing and the expected funding benefits of its pending Century Financial acquisition during its Q3 2026 earnings call. Management said more than $130 million of loan payoffs during the quarter masked the strength of new originations.

Key Takeaways

• Q3 loan payoffs exceeded $130 million, but Bank7 backfilled those repayments and still produced loan growth. Management also sees additional loan funding opportunities in Q4.
• Bank7 currently expects the Century Financial transaction, scheduled to close November 1, to be neutral to net interest margin initially.
• Legacy Bank7’s Q3 loan beta was close to 60%, while its deposit beta was approximately 52%.
• If a rate increase occurs in Q4, management expects the loan beta to reach 65%–70%, with the deposit beta assumed to be lower but more difficult to forecast.
• Management continues to target companywide loan growth ranging from the mid-single digits to the low double digits, depending on market contributions and loan payoff activity.
• Bank7 expects to realize approximately 75%–80% of planned merger cost savings in the first quarter, with the remainder expected by the end of the second quarter.

Core Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

Management attributed Q3 loan growth to strong banker production and healthy economic conditions in Texas and Oklahoma. The company maintained discipline on both loan and deposit pricing, supporting a stable net interest margin despite competitive lending markets.

Bank7 carried higher liquidity during the quarter to fund known loan commitments and prepare for cash requirements related to the Century transaction. Management said the loan pipeline remains strong, although most of the funding anticipated from the pipeline identified in Q2 has already occurred.

Century is expected to add a lower-cost core deposit base in New Mexico, particularly around Santa Fe. Bank7 plans to continue serving business owners, entrepreneurs and high-net-worth clients while expanding commercial banking activity in Century’s markets.

The acquired funding could also support Bank7’s Dallas operation, where loan growth has consistently exceeded deposit growth. Management does not plan a broad day-one runoff of Century’s loan portfolio. However, certain purchased loan participations will likely be allowed to mature or exit over time because Bank7 does not intend to pursue that strategy.

Management Guidance

Bank7 currently views the Century acquisition as neutral to net interest margin. The company intends to sell some or all of Century’s bond portfolio, which could generate a meaningful amount of cash. The eventual margin impact will depend on the timing of those sales and how the proceeds are redeployed.

Management expects Century’s lower funding costs to make the margin easier to maintain in the near to medium term. That benefit may gradually decline as liquidity is deployed into new loans, potentially including loans with somewhat lower yields.

Bank7 expects approximately 75%–80% of merger cost savings to be achieved in the first quarter, with the remaining savings phased in by the end of the second quarter. The systems conversion is currently expected in July. Management said the second half of 2027 should be more profitable than the first half as integration benefits build.

The company expects its loan-to-deposit ratio generally to remain above 80%, although it could approach 95% depending on capital, liquidity, loan maturities and access to funding. Management said operation near the upper end would require substantial overnight-capable funding sources.

Risks and Watch Items

• Large and irregular loan payoffs can obscure underlying production and create quarterly volatility in reported loan growth.
• The margin benefit from Century’s lower-cost deposits may diminish as excess liquidity is redeployed.
• Loan competition remains consistently strong across Bank7’s markets, requiring continued pricing discipline.
• Systems-provider scheduling has pushed the expected conversion date to July, delaying the final 20%–25% of targeted efficiencies.
• Management said it is too early to confirm Century’s goodwill balance because interest-rate changes could affect purchase accounting marks and other valuation items.
• Higher loan-to-deposit ratios would require dependable contingent liquidity to protect the bank during potential market-wide funding disruptions.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Analysts focused on how Bank7 will deploy Century’s deposits and bond-sale proceeds. Management said it will proceed methodically, balancing faster loan growth against margin preservation. Century’s funding could be directed toward Dallas and other markets with stronger loan demand than local deposit generation.

On loan growth, management reiterated that it does not plan to materially change Bank7’s existing commercial banking model. The company expects companywide growth in the mid-single-digit to low-double-digit range, while avoiding unnecessary credit risk or aggressive pricing concessions.

Regarding integration, management expects most cost reductions to occur early rather than making 2027 solely an integration year. The remaining efficiencies will depend partly on completing the July systems conversion.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Thank you. Welcome to the Bank7 Corp. Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Before we get started, I'd like to highlight the legal information and disclaimer on page 25 of the Investor's Presentation. For those who do not have access to the presentation, management is going to discuss certain topics that contain forward-looking information, which is based on management's beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, they can give no assurance that such expectations will be proved to be correct. Such statements are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions including, among other things, the direct and indirect effect of economic conditions on interest rates, credit quality, loan demand, liquidity, and monetary and supervisory policies of the banking regulators. Should one or more of these risks materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, financial results may vary materially from those expected. Also, please note that this conference call contains references to non-GAAP financial measures.

You can find reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures in an 8-K that was filed this morning by the company. Representing the company on today's call, we have William B. Haines, Chairman, Thomas L. Travis, President and CEO, John T. Phillips, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Jason Estes, President and Chief Credit Officer, Kelly Harris, Executive VP and CFO, Paul Timmons, Director of Accounting. With that, I'll turn the call over to Thomas L. Travis. Thank you and welcome to the call. First and foremost, what a great company we have here at Bank7.

Thomas Travis

It doesn't happen by accident. Our team's been together a long time. We execute at a high level every day. We like to say it takes courage to be great and we're proud of our consistent top-tier results. Just a fantastic company and really good results, especially given all the things that we're having to do at the same time, closing our recent acquisition. So, a really great quarter. I would say that highlights would start out with very strong loan growth that is stronger than what it appears because we overcame substantial unscheduled paydowns from large customers. So our loan team, as usual, is functioning at a very high level, and we're very thankful for them. Then we discipline ourselves with our loan pricing and our deposit pricing, and we properly manage that balance sheet, which enables us to continue benefiting from that strong and consistent NIM.

We also benefit from the robust economy and the business-friendly markets down here in Texas and Oklahoma. And it's a real blessing, and we're mindful of that. For a long time, people on the call were asking us what we were going to do with the excess capital and it was tempting to distribute some of those funds while the calls were being made asking us what we were going to do. But we waited and we're glad we did and we're very excited about the pending merger with Century in New Mexico, and it's a really good example of discipline and patience and prudent use of capital, which really drives the metrics on how transformational and beneficial this transaction will be. Century is an outstanding deposit and banking franchise that is well entrenched in the communities in New Mexico, especially Santa Fe and its surrounding areas. And we really look forward to that merger, we look forward to continuing serving our existing communities and customers as well as theirs and coming together as one team. So we're well positioned for the future, looking forward to executing on our plans and with that we're here to answer any questions anyone might have.

Thank you.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] We will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Woody Lay with KBW. Please go ahead.

Question-and-Answer Session

Wood Lay

Hey, good morning, guys. Good morning. I wanted to start on the organic growth in the quarter and as you mentioned, you know it's impressive. It was very impressive considering all the things you were juggling inter-quarter. Maybe specifically on the deposit strategy. Deposits were up pretty significantly in the quarter and you're about to add a really good source of cheap core funding with Century Financial. So it's just curious what you sort of plan to do with the excess liquidity that's on the balance sheet? Is this a sign that the loan pipeline is pretty strong in your eyes?

Kelly Harris

Hey Woody, this is Kelly. Yes, during the quarter, you know, we experienced, as Thomas L. Travis mentioned, substantial loan paydown. We chose to be conservative from an excess liquidity, higher deposit balance because of the known loan fundings as well as the pending merger and some of that cash that goes out related to that. And so that's kind of the game plan going forward. You know, strong pipeline as well as closing this merger.

Wood Lay

Got it. And then, you know, I know the merger is closing November 1, so midway through the fourth quarter. But just any sort of NIM guidance you could provide, you know, pro forma with Century Financial plus, you know, the potential for an additional rate hike from here? I feel like that would be helpful.

Kelly Harris

Yes, I think from a deal perspective, we currently view the deal as neutral to our NIM. And we intend to sell some to all of Century's bonds. And depending on when those sales occur, it'll generate a meaningful amount of cash, and we will be methodical about how we deploy that cash. In some scenarios, it'll be more accretive to our margin. In other scenarios, it'll be more neutral to our margin. And from a Bank7 legacy perspective, the loan beta in the quarter was close to 60%. The deposit beta was around 52%. I think, you know, forward-looking, assuming a rate hike in Q4, we anticipate that loan beta being in the 65% to 70% range, and the deposit beta a little bit harder to project, but we assume less.

Thomas Travis

Yes, and I would add to that. That's really good, Kelly, and accurate. And I would add to that, if you could think of the word bias, or think of the word tendency, once the merger happens, we're going to have a bias or a tendency to be able to more easily maintain that margin due to the influx of a cheaper cost of funds. And that advantage will gradually dissipate over time as we redeploy our and some of it could be redeployed into slightly lower yielding loans. So, you think of a tradeoff between growing slower by maintaining existing pricing, compared with growing faster potentially on the loan book because you decide that you want to capitalize on slightly lower cost of funds, and therefore you can lower your loan rates. And so I don't think that's going to be a material thing.

It's not like you're going to see all of a sudden lower loan pricing. I'm just pointing out that we're going to have some flexibility in the near-term to medium-term because of that advantage of a slightly lower cost of funds.

Wood Lay

Yeah, got it. And then maybe just last for me, and you've kind of hit on it a little bit, you know, on the bond portfolio, but longer term with the acquisition of Century, it would feel like there's an opportunity on the balance sheet remix side to help that 25% plus accretion longer term. Do you think about remixing Century's loan portfolio over, you know, the medium to longer term?

Unknown Speaker

I think you're going to see us continue to do what we've done in the past. And they have commercial banking talent that aligns philosophically with us. And so you'll see us kind of expanding into a couple of new markets there, but doing the same thing. The same thing that we've traditionally done, which is, you know, catering to business owners, entrepreneurs, high net worth individuals and really pursuing that commercial loan and it'll look similar to what we've done in our other markets. And it also gives us some more opportunity, specifically in our Dallas operation. You know, where we're constantly funding challenged there. A lot more loan growth than there is deposit growth. And so maybe we can share some of the newly acquired funds into our Dallas market.

Wood Lay

Got it. All right. Well, that's all for me.

Operator

The next question comes from Nathan Race with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Nathan Race

Hey guys, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Um, just going back to one of the previous questions, you know, just thinking about, you know, any potential run off that you're anticipating at the Century loan portfolio and just maybe bigger picture, you know, how do you, you know, anticipate the addition of Century kind of impacting, you know, Bank7's historical kind of high single to double-digit loan trajectory that we've seen kind of longer term from you guys.

Unknown Speaker

I don't think there's any day 1 plan to specifically run off loan balances. I think you'll hopefully see a steady, similar to what we typically do, and as you just referenced, a 5% mid-single-digit to low double-digit company-wide growth, whichever markets are able to contribute to that consistently. And remember, we still run into these chunky periods of payoffs. And you can't see it in the numbers, but our payoffs this quarter were over $130 million. And so we backfilled that and were able to grow nicely over time. The prior, but that is a very atypical amount of payoffs followed on the heels of reasonably significant payoffs in Q2. But we knew going at least midway through Q2 that we were stacked with a big loan pipeline to fund throughout the rest of the year. And most of that funding has occurred, but we still have some clarity, some visibility to a little bit of additional funding in the fourth quarter.

So it's really, you know, go back to Thomas L. Travis's opening statement about the strong economies that we operate within. And we have a great team of bankers. They're out working and we are finding deals. And we're not going to stop, we're not going to change. I don't see, you know, a consistent move up or down. I want us to keep doing more of the same, right? Let's just be what we are. And if we run into a couple periods where we can grow a little faster because things are going well, then let's do it. Not going to take unnecessary risk and we're not going to give away our margin.

Thomas Travis

Yes, there's 1 minor addition I would say that Century did have a more aggressive use of buying loan participations. And it's certainly not the majority of the portfolio, but it's a healthy amount that we intend to, we're not going to pursue that in those areas. Those particular loan participations as they mature, as we have the opportunity to exit those, we would, which would then provide additional funding sources.

Nathan Race

Got it. That's really helpful. And just curious on the some competitive dynamics in your geographies these days, I think there's some growing competition across some of those markets. So just curious what you're seeing in terms of kind of new loan pricing these days. You know, it was great to see, I think, core loan yields ticked up 2 basis points quarter over quarter. So just curious kind of what you're seeing from a competitive perspective, particularly across some of the specialties that you guys operate within.

Unknown Speaker

I haven't seen any dynamic changes there, Nate. I mean, it's very consistent. We always have tough competition in all the markets where we're actively loaning money. I don't see that changing. I guess there was a period during COVID where there were some people that were not particularly aggressive in loaning out money, but it's been very consistent for the last 3 to 4 years. Lots of banks looking to deploy into loans and that's where the relationship bankers, you know, win the day.

Nathan Race

Got it. That's helpful. Maybe 1 more for Kelly just on the expense outlook. I think Century is running around $12 million a quarter over the last handful of quarters. In terms of overhead costs. So obviously it'll be noisy the next couple quarters, but just any sense in terms of as you get to kind of the 30% cost saves the timing around the systems conversion to, I imagine, realize the large majority of those cost saves.

Kelly Harris

Yes, I mean, I like to look at our previous deal with Cornerstone. I mean, you saw efficiency ratio creep up a couple hundred basis points initially. And then over time, we feel very confident that we can operate non-interest expense at or below where we currently operate ours. I think from the timing of systems conversions, is that more of a Q3?

Thomas Travis

Yes, I would say, we modeled when we sent that deck out, we talked about expected efficiencies and the numbers in there. And I've got 2 numbers that I'm looking at in my head. I don't know the percentage, but I would say that it's least 75% or 80% of the cost savings will occur immediately in the first quarter and then there'll be the remainder spread out between the end of the second quarter and the end of, I'm sorry, the end of the first quarter and the end of the second quarter. At 75%, 25%, 75% cost savings to be achieved right away. But back to Kelly's point, I think you can look at that. What are we at? 2.05% of non-interest expense? Is it close to that number? And so when you think about that number, Nate, we should be well south of 2% if you just look at, if you want to call it the Century standalone, because you always have heavier at the headquarters.

Nathan Race

Maybe if I could just take 1 more. Obviously, it's a pretty transformational deal. I think Century is a large-scale acquisition history of the company. But just curious, is 2027 kind of more of a digest and integrate type of year for Bank7? Or do you guys maybe anticipate some additional M&A coming your way to the extent those opportunities are still there for you guys?

Thomas Travis

Nate, we're always in a shoot, move, communicate mode, and we would be disappointed as a group if we allowed much of the noise and expense to linger into far into 2027. And so with the exception of the burden that we have because the providers are always slow to give us conversion dates. I believe our conversion date is in July. And so we don't have any choice but to allow, call it that 20% to 25% of last cuts to the efficiencies to be realized. But we're not going to be slow. We're not going to take a casual approach to this. We're going to do what we always do and we're going to make those adjustments and create as many efficiencies as we can day 1.

And so, yes, the back half of the year will be more profitable than the front half of the year, but you're going to see us really achieve very, very meaningful results starting immediately.

Nathan Race

Yep, got you. Makes sense. Thanks for that, Thomas. If I could actually just make 1 housekeeping question for Kelly. On the goodwill number for Century, the slide deck indicated you're expecting a material write-up on some assets. Within some of the locations, any sense of what kind of all-in goodwill number we can anticipate for the fourth quarter once the deal closes?

Kelly Harris

Yes, Nate, I think it's too soon. I know that the increase in rates are going to impact some of the marks, and so I think, and then some of the valuation pieces. I think it's too soon to confirm that.

Nathan Race

Fair enough. I appreciate all the color, guys. Congrats on the great quarter again.

Thomas Travis

Thank you.

Kelly Harris

Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 to join the question queue. The next question comes from Jordan Ghent with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Jordan Ghent

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to kind of talk about the loan deposit ratio. I mean, historically, you guys have been operating with a higher loan deposit ratio kind of in the mid-90s. Kind of now with Century, where do you see that kind of going? Do you expect it to go? Go back up to the kind of mid-90s, towards 100%? Or do you expect to keep?

Thomas Travis

Keep it a little lower. Thanks. That's a function, as you well know, that's a function of a lot of different things, which include liquidity, capital, and debt instruments, and ability to capture liquidity if necessary. And so, you know, it also is impacted by the loan maturity distribution schedule. We have our loan portfolio. We have a high number of notes that mature during the year. And so it's much more complex, it's much more dynamic than a simple answer. I would just say that, similar to our NIM, you probably won't see us operate much below 80% in our in our world. There will be times, depending on all those various factors that I just mentioned, that we may sneak up to that 95% level. Um, and, and again, that would just depend on the circumstances as far as capital and liquidity and markets and all the things that we see. Generally speaking, 1 thing I will say is that if you see us operating in those higher ranges, we're going to be doing that only if we have tremendous sources of funding that are overnight capable sources to make darn sure that the bank is well positioned for any kind of a macro event, for any kind of liquidity scare like we saw in March of 2023.

And so, I know that's a long potential non-answer, but the fact is that we're comfortable operating in that band and those ranges depending on all those factors and circumstances.

Jordan Ghent

Got it. And then maybe just 1 more on the 1-time transaction expenses that you guys had in the IP of I think it was around $16 million. Has any of that been realized already and maybe what's remaining or how much of it is remaining, I guess?

Thomas Travis

Question. The sorry the 1-time merger expenses you guys had I think you said It was $16.2 million you guys put in the slide deck. Yes. Oh, those are, you've got, that's the catch-all. Investment banker fees, those are conversion fees, early contract termination, and then you've got the, you know, Yes, all those things that will be realized. It's just like any other M&A transaction.

Operator

Okay, thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Thomas L. Travis for any closing remarks.

Thomas Travis

Thank you again for participating. We appreciate our investment partners and we appreciate the analysts covering us the way they do. If there's any of our team members that are on the call, we appreciate you a lot. And if there's anybody from Century that's on the call, we're super excited to be joining forces together and looking forward to the future together and onward and upward for more good results for our great company. So thank you very much.

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

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