Equity Bancshares (44X) Q3 2026 Earnings Report

The call was predominantly positive, supported by record loan production, nearly 12% annualized legacy-market loan growth, improving production in acquired markets, strong capital, fee-income momentum, progress on the Lincoln merger and confidence in 2027 organic growth. The main challenges were declining deposits and noninterest-bearing deposit mix, pressure on net interest income and margin, higher charge-offs, consumer balance stress, and a decline in reported tangible book value per share due to AOCI. Management remained constructive on credit, growth, technology initiatives and the transaction outlook.

For the fourth quarter, excluding Lincoln, Equity expects margin to return to the 4.25% to 4.35% range, noninterest income between $10 million and $11 million, and noninterest expense between $47 million and $48 million; it continues to expect a provision run rate of roughly $1.5 million to $2 million per quarter, depending on loan growth and charge-off levels. Lincoln is expected to close in the fourth quarter, convert on to Equity systems in the second quarter of 2027, and contribute $0.27 to EPS, with half the cost savings realized in the year and 2027 is where the accretion begins; pro forma will be approximately $9.1 billion as a company, with pro forma TCE to total assets of approximately 8.5% and total risk-based capital of approximately 13.4% at close. On an organic basis, single digit upwards of that is something that we can definitely target in 2027, specifically mid-single digit, with somewhere between 5% and 7% something that we can hit as a company, while without the acquisition, we could be actually stronger than that; each additional rate hike adds between 3 and 5 basis points for every 25 basis points, and Lincoln’s impact on run rate margin is 8 to 10 basis points down, or 2 to 3 basis points of degradation based on a December 1 close.