Renasant - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 2025 adjusted diluted EPS was $0.77, a slight miss versus S&P Global consensus $0.78; GAAP diluted EPS was $0.63 as merger/conversion expenses weighed on results; adjusted EPS improved YoY versus $0.70 in Q3 2024. EPS consensus values from S&P Global: $0.78*.
• Net interest margin held at 3.85% (FTE), with adjusted NIM up 4 bps QoQ to 3.62%, supported by loan growth of $462.1M (9.9% annualized); cost of total deposits rose 2 bps QoQ to 2.14%.
• Noninterest income declined $2.3M QoQ (ex-MSR gain in Q2), and mortgage banking income fell $2.2M QoQ on lower lock volume and gain-on-sale margin; provision for credit losses was $10.5M as criticized loans rose broadly.
• Capital actions: Board approved a $150M share repurchase authorization (no Q3 buybacks), redeemed $60M sub debt on Oct 1, and raised the quarterly dividend to $0.23 (+$0.01) payable Jan 1, 2026—key potential stock catalysts.
• Management guided to modest NIM contraction in Q4 and core noninterest expense reductions of $2–3M in Q4 and another $2–3M in Q1 2026, with modeled synergies more evident going forward.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • “Renasant’s financial performance in the third quarter was strong with good loan growth and profit improvement… The integration with The First continues to go well” — Kevin D. Chapman (CEO).
  • Adjusted net interest margin expanded 4 bps QoQ to 3.62%; net interest income (FTE) rose to $228.1M (+$5.4M QoQ) helped by loan growth.
  • Capital flexibility improved: new $150M buyback authorization, sub debt redemption ($60M), book value per share increased to $40.26; TCE ratio 8.98%.

• What Went Wrong

  • Noninterest income softened QoQ (−$2.3M ex-MSR) and mortgage banking income fell $2.2M QoQ; gain-on-sale margin decreased to 1.32%, lock volume down $89.4M QoQ.
  • Deposit costs rose 2 bps QoQ (cost of total deposits 2.14%); management cited ongoing competitive pressure in deposit pricing.
  • Credit metrics mixed: criticized loans to total loans increased to 3.22% (vs 2.66% in Q2); NPLs/loans rose to 0.90% (vs 0.76% in Q2); coverage ratio declined to 173.47% (vs 204.97% in Q2).

Transcript

Speaker 5

Good day, and welcome to the Renasant Corporation 2025 third quarter earnings conference call and webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press the star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press the star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Kelly Hutcheson. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Renasant Corporation's quarterly webcast and conference call. Participating in the call today are members of Renasant's executive management team. Before we begin, please note that many of our comments during this call will be forward-looking statements, which involve risk and uncertainty. There are many factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to, changes in the mix and cost of our funding sources, interest rate fluctuation, regulatory changes, portfolio performance, and other factors discussed in our recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our recently filed earnings release, which has been posted to our corporate site, www.renasant.com, at the Press Releases link under the News and Market Data tab.

We undertake no obligation, and we specifically disclaim any obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events, or changes to future operating results over time. In addition, some of the financial measures that we may discuss this morning are non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release. Now, I will turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Chapman.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Kelly, and good morning. We appreciate you joining the call and look forward to sharing results for the quarter. Renasant's financial performance in the third quarter reflects good loan growth and profit improvement that keeps us on the path to meet the financial goals of the merger. The integration with The First continues to go well. Systems conversion took place in early August, and I believe we have made great strides in operating as one team. As you know, in July 2024, Renasant and The First announced a partnership that would maximize our strengths and create a high-performing Southeast bank. At that time, we established profitability goals related to return on assets, return on tangible common equity, and our efficiency ratio. We knew that the third quarter of 2025 would be an important measuring stick for our progress against these expectations.

Q3 results position us to achieve our goals. Additionally, it is very gratifying to see our team, despite going through the largest conversion either company has gone through, produce loan growth of almost 10% during the quarter. I want to thank all of our employees for their tremendous effort this quarter in completing systems conversion while continuing to understand and meet the needs of our customers. I will now highlight financial results for the quarter. The company's net income was $59.8 million or $0.63 per diluted share. Adjusted earnings, excluding merger charges, were $72.9 million or $0.77 per diluted share. Loans were up $462 million on a linked quarter basis, or 9.9% annualized. Deposits were down $158 million from the second quarter, which was driven by a seasonal decrease in public funds of $169 million on a linked quarter basis.

Reported net interest margin was flat at 3.85%, while adjusted margin was up four basis points to 3.62% on a linked quarter basis. Our adjusted total cost of deposits increased by four basis points to 2.08%, while our adjusted loan yields increased five basis points to 6.23%. We look forward to seeing additional profitability improvements in upcoming quarters as efficiency savings are realized. I will now turn the call over to Jim.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning. As Kevin mentioned, we are encouraged by the integration efforts of our employees and the positive impact on results this quarter. Our adjusted return on average assets of 1.09% for the quarter is an improvement of 12 basis points from a year ago, and our adjusted return on tangible common equity of 14.22% for the quarter is an improvement of 296 basis points. From a capital standpoint, all regulatory capital ratios remain in excess of required minimums to be considered well capitalized. We've recorded a credit loss provision on loans of $10.5 million, comprised of $9.7 million for funded loans and $0.8 million for unfunded commitments. Net charge-offs were $4.3 million, and the ACL as a percentage of total loans declined one basis point quarter over quarter to 1.56%. Turning to the income statement, our adjusted pre-provision net revenue was $103.2 million.

Net interest income growth was driven by the improvement in the net interest margin and loan growth. Non-interest income was $46 million in the third quarter, a linked quarter decrease of $0.841 million, excluding the gain on sale of MSR assets in Q2. Non-interest expense was $183.8 million for the third quarter, excluding merger and conversion expenses of $17.5 million. Non-interest expense was $166.3 million for the quarter, a linked quarter increase of $3.6 million. With systems conversion now complete, we expect modeled synergies to be more evident in our results going forward. Regarding conversion-related expenses, we believe a majority have been recorded through the third quarter, with a modest amount expected to come in the fourth quarter. There was a decline in our adjusted efficiency ratio of about 0.4 percentage points, and we expect to see additional improvements in the coming quarters.

We are encouraged by the results of the third quarter and the positive momentum going into the fourth quarter. I will now turn the call back over to Kevin.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Jim. We look forward to closing out a successful year for Renasant. We have come a long way on our goal of improving profitability. The combination of a strong balance sheet plus added profitability puts us in a position to capitalize on opportunities in our vibrant banking footprint. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Speaker 5

Yes, thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your headset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw it, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. The first question comes from Steven Scott with Piper Sandler.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Really nice quarter here. Loan growth was particularly encouraging. Can you give any color around what you're seeing from a pipeline perspective and maybe also around, specifically the legacy markets, maybe in and around the Gulf Coast? You know, potential strength you're seeing there that's helping fuel this strong growth?

Speaker 0

Yeah, hey, Steven, good morning. This is Kevin. Looking at loan growth for the quarter, I know we've been guiding more towards, you know, call it the mid-single digits, because we've been expecting payoffs to increase. Our production has been there all year long. I think for Q1, Q2, we've been more in the 7% range if you look at the net loan growth. This looming potential of payoffs feels like it continues to be out there. Getting to the current quarter, what I tell you, what we're excited about is the growth happened all throughout our footprint.

Whether you look at it as a breakdown from a geography, whether you look at it from, say, our credit channels, whether it's our small business lending units, our business banking lending units, or even some of our larger units like corporate or commercial lending units, all categories, we saw good distributed growth in all of them. Even if you break it down by asset classes, we saw good growth. Going to where we were back in July of 2024, when we contemplated merging with The First Bancshares, one thing we thought we could do is unlock some potential in both companies. I think Q3 is the.

Speaker 5

Yes, please stand by. The conference room will resume.

Speaker 0

Far back over, specific to The First and the Gulf Coast, what we've seen is we've seen good growth there as well. The opportunities that Renasant can provide to The First lenders, with being able to expand relationships now that they have a little bit bigger balance sheet, we have a bigger balance sheet, we have more lending capabilities, or the ability to do specialized lending with some of our secured lending lines, that team has immediately gravitated to it, has made referrals, and we've seen immediate successes as a result of the combination. As we look, we're excited about what Q3 indicates, how we're positioned. I think we've got the opportunity to continue growth in Q4 and beyond.

Great. Appreciate that color, Kevin. Maybe just curious about pace of expense saves from here, kind of how much maybe you've been able to extract so far and what we could think about in terms of further expense saves from the deal and the path as we maybe look at a good 1Q2026 run rate, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Steven. It's Jim. Just to touch on Q3 for a second, you saw in core NIE we were up about $3 million, excluding the merger expenses. I would say actually to really comment on the increase in what we saw in Q3, there were three buckets where we saw the increase, and they were about equally weighted. You had an increase in health and life, you had an increase in occupancy, and you saw an increase in health and life occupancy in the FAS 91. Two of those are sort of uncontrollable, so we'll see how those play out in future quarters. As it relates more particularly to your question, our sense is that in Q4, we'll see about a $2 million or $3 million decrease in core NIE for Q4, and then another $2 million or $3 million decrease in core NIE in Q1.

Okay. Fantastic. That's really helpful, Jim. Lastly for me, I really appreciate how you guys broke out kind of accretion in your slide deck. What's kind of a good baseline assumption of the normal accretion expected? Is it around that, I guess it was $12.4 million, is that right? Or maybe the interest rate component of that was about $9.8 million if I'm doing the math right. Is that a good way to think about forward accretion?

It obviously is going to vary. At least the accelerated part is going to vary given, you know, loan prepayment. It's a hard thing to predict, but I think that scheduled accretion is going to track pretty closely to what you saw in Q3.

Perfect. Thanks so much for the color. Appreciate the time, guys.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Steven.

Speaker 5

Thank you. The next question comes from Matt Olney with Stevens.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, everybody. Want to ask more about that core margin in the third quarter. Saw some good expansion with that. Any more color on the drivers of that expansion? I guess if we look forward, I think you mentioned on a previous call that you thought core margin would maybe flatten out as we got towards the fourth quarter. Is that still the view of the fourth quarter core margin? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Matt. This is Jim. Yes, we were pleased to see a little expansion in Q3. Looking forward, I would say in Q4 probably some modest contraction in the margin in Q4. For 2026, I would say, you know, modest expansion. Not a lot of change, but that would be a general outlook. That assumes four rate cuts between now and year-end of 2026.

Just to clarify, you said that assumes four rate cuts, including today, I assume, between now and the end of next year. Is that right?

That's correct. That's correct.

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks for that. I guess switching over to credit quality, we did see criticized loans jump up in the third quarter. Any color on the driver of that jump-up of criticized loans?

Hey, Matt, good morning. This is David. It was a broad-based increase for the quarter. There was a little bit of commercial real estate, a little bit of C&I. If we get into the weeds a little bit, we had a single multifamily transaction that makes up about a quarter of it that we feel very strong. That's a good asset, just was underperforming relative to our original budget. We expect that loan to pay off in the ordinary course, probably early 2026. We had two C&I transactions that made up roughly a third of that number. One of them is the tricolor credit that we've talked about that made up a large percentage of that asset type. A little bit of migration in our self-storage portfolio, and then a little bit of migration in one asset, our senior housing. It was broad-based.

Within our downgrades to criticized, we don't feel that we have any loss exposure in that increase, but it's broad-based. Matt, I know you know we do a fairly aggressive job of looking at our loan portfolio from the health portfolio, risk-grading loans proactively to make sure we're identifying risks so we can find those loans and migrate them out of the bank as quick as possible. I think that's just a testament to our early identification of problem loans so we can manage them proactively.

Yeah, okay. Thanks for the update, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you, Matt.

Speaker 5

Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Rose with Raymond James.

Speaker 1

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just on the new buyback that you guys announced, you know, good to see you guys are going to be building capital, but you haven't bought back really any stock since 2021. Just wanted to see where that currently plays in your thought process, particularly given the fact that you've just here recently completed a deal. There's probably other deals out there. It seems like the environment's good. Just wanted to kind of run down the thought process on capital as we move forward. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Michael. It's Jim. The third quarter was an important quarter for us because we obviously got the deal closed, and that was reflected in Q2. To go through systems conversion and just see Q3 come out like it did, and of course, Kevin's comments I thought were spot on. It was just really nice to see all that momentum that we've got and the fact that our teams remain focused. I say that because I think it's important to have that backdrop as we think about capital because we feel like we've got pretty good visibility into Q4 and into 2026 in terms of the prospects for us to continue to grow that capital. Our sense is that we could grow those capital ratios anywhere between 60 and 70 basis points between now and year-end 2026. The capital levers, including buyback, are much more in focus for us.

We are putting a lot of thought into that. I think we are mindful of the fact that we're going to have a growing capital base. We've taken a couple of steps here recently. One, notably, right after the quarter, we redeemed $60 million of sub debt. You saw the dividend announcement, the common dividend announcement. We wanted to think about that authorization. One of the reasons we increased it is just proportionate. We're 50% larger in terms of market cap and capital, but also, it's a lever that we're increasingly inclined to think about. I think whether it's the buyback, supporting organic growth, which of course has been strong, remains the number one goal. We're going to bear down on uses of capital, and I think buyback is certainly high on that list in terms of levers we might pull in the coming quarters.

Speaker 1

Very helpful. Maybe if I can just ask a question on deposits. Your guys' loan-to-deposit ratio is now kind of approaching 90%. It's the highest it's been since basically the beginning of COVID. Can you just talk about some of the deposit growth strategy? I know there's always some seasonality with muni deposits too, but the general trend has been upward over the past few years. Just wanted to get a better sense of your plans for deposit growth, juxtaposed with the rate environment. Thanks.

Speaker 2

I think we've been spoiled because I think out of the last 10 quarters, we've had deposit growth that's equaled or better, or better loan growth. To not have that in a quarter is certainly something that caught our attention. As you point out, a lot of it was seasonal. It had to do with public funds. Our goal is to grow deposits, core deposits in line with loan growth. That remains a focus of ours in the way we incentivize our teams, the way we motivate our teams. As we go forward in 2026, we want that core deposit growth to equal whatever loan growth we produce.

As we looked at Q4, some of the public outflows that we saw in Q3, there might be, just given the seasonality of the way some of the municipalities behave, we could see some of that come back in the latter part of Q4. We'll see how that plays out. I would tell you the funding, loan growth remains a top priority here. We know we can generate deposits. We've got a great record of doing that. It's a focus of the company, whether it's this quarter or next quarter or for the next, you know, decade. That is a paramount focus at Renasant to grow the deposit base regardless of what loan growth is.

Speaker 1

I really appreciate the color. Maybe if I could just sneak one last one in. I appreciate the near-term, you know, color on expenses. I know that's something we all struggle with in modeling as we go through a deal, especially at this size. Just as we think about kind of the combined franchise now that systems conversion has happened, you know, are there other areas and levers that you guys can pull to kind of, you know, generate the positive operating leverage as we kind of move forward? I'm just trying to better appreciate, you know, some of the opportunities maybe at Legacy Renasant now that you have the cost saves from the deal and the accretion from the deal. Thanks.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Hey, Michael, Kevin and I, so the short answer is yes, right? If we go back 16, 18 months ago, Renasant on a standalone basis, The First on a standalone basis, both of us were looking at either adding expenses for the assets where we were at, or we needed scale for the assets, for the expenses that and the infrastructure we had built. Combining both companies unlocked potential. I think we laid out some goals when we launched this of, you know, an ROA in the 120s, mid-teens ROE, and a mid-50s efficiency ratio. I think, again, if you saw it in Q2, you see it in Q3, we are right on top and on path to meet those goals. As we've talked about or as we've tried to communicate, that's not where we're stopping.

There's real momentum in the company, not only around expenses, but driving higher levels of profitability on our expenses. That operating leverage that's there is going to continue to come in two places. It'll come from discipline and management on the expense side, but it's also going to be getting the right return on the expenses we have. We've had probably above-average loan growth now for a couple of quarters. We want to have above-average loan growth. It doesn't have to be, you know, 20% loan growth. It just needs to be a couple of multiples above the average so that we can get the scale, so we can get the revenue that's generated off those expenses. That's been an effort that's been ongoing, I know, on the Renasant. Now I think you're seeing it on the combined company.

There's still going to be a continued effort to look at our expenses, create efficiencies. Accountability is prevalent all throughout the company, and we hold each other accountable. The expectations for the company internally have been raised, I would say, further than where expectations are for external estimates. We really, the momentum we have around our financial performance and our focus, and that leads with profitability, that has been embraced by the company. I think it's unleashed some pent-up excitement, pent-up demand within the company as we're achieving the success that we felt we could achieve. The operating leverages will be not only on the expense side, but it's also going to come on the revenue side. Our provision was elevated this quarter, not because of credit, but because we had twice the loan growth we thought we were going to have.

That revenue that's going to come from that above-average loan growth is going to be there in the future quarters. That's what excites us about the past couple of quarters and some of the balance sheet growth that we've had. It's in line with our plan and really kind of reemphasizes what we thought could happen combining both Renasant and The First is unlocking some of that potential that was there, unlocking it when we combined as opposed to us not being able to unlock it or struggle a little bit if we remained independent.

Speaker 1

I appreciate all the color, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Michael.

Speaker 5

Thank you. The next question comes from David Bishop of the Hubdee Group.

Hey, good morning, gentlemen.

Speaker 0

Good morning.

Good morning, Kevin.

Hey, Kevin, quick question. In the preamble, it sounded like maybe you were surprised in terms of the lack of payoffs this quarter and maybe last. Just curious if you have line of sight into potential payoffs into the next quarter and if they didn't occur, maybe what's delaying them or are there borrowers sort of waiting for lower rates? Just curious if there's any way to ring-fence potential headwinds into the coming quarter or next if that's possible.

Speaker 4

Yeah, it is. To be honest with you, I am, and I think we are a little bit surprised that payoffs have been a little bit muted. We've also been, we've set an indicator that we've been looking at, which is the 10-year. If the 10-year, as it approached 4% or dropped below 4%, we think the risk of prepayments, payoffs for us increase. Q3, I don't know the exact number on the 10-year, but it was probably in the 4-teens or the 4-20s and didn't really approach the 4% range until we got into October.

As we look at, say, fourth quarter, we are more focused on ensuring that we have good line of sight into customers, our lenders getting updates as to where potential payoffs, prepayments could occur, only because we had set towards the end of last year, beginning of this year, that a 4% 10-year is an important benchmark for us. As we approached it or we got below it, that could elevate payoffs in our commercial real estate books.

Got it. Obviously, you're cognizant of the significant amount of M&A activity in your backyard or backyards, so to speak. Just curious how aggressive you think you're going to be in terms of recruiting some of that talent and commercial clients that could dislodge from those acquisitions. Is the opportunity set big enough to, and I know the The First Bancshares merger just closed, but is the opportunity there to sort of replace whole bank M&A with lift out of talent? Thanks.

Yeah. David, I'm not sure it replaces it, but it provides an interesting and unique opportunity for us. In some cases, there may be opportunity to hire. With some of the overlap, we may have the opportunity to pick up customers without any additional hires. I think we find ourselves in a very unique position, and we like where we sit with all the disruption. I don't necessarily think this is going to be the last disruption. That's what we've seen. There's going to be further disruption in the Southeast. I think we sit in a very unique position to potentially benefit from that. It may come in the form of hiring. Just for example, in Q3, I think we hired 10 new either Market Presidents or prominent lenders throughout the footprint. We've also been actively hiring in Q4.

In some cases, we have the opportunity to pick up potential business, and we won't have to hire. We don't feel like we'll have to hire to do that. We're excited that we're not in the middle of a conversion. We're not in the middle of approvals. We're not in the middle of anything. We're on the other side of our conversion, the other side of our integration, and really focused on what we want to do, which is get business and gain market share. We're excited about where we stand right now as it relates to that.

Got it. Yeah, you guys are definitely in a good position. Thanks for the color.

Thank you, David.

Speaker 5

Thank you. The next question comes from Catherine Mueller with KBW.

Speaker 8

Hi, thanks. Good morning.

Good morning, Catherine.

I want to circle back on expenses, just to kind of zoom in on maybe looking at the expense trajectory into 2026. If I lower expenses per what you're talking about, Jim, kind of somewhere around $2 million to $3 million each of the next two quarters, I'm kind of starting next year at a $161 million base. If I just annualize that number, I'm basically where consensus is for 2026 in expenses, which is $645 million. As I'm thinking about that, do you feel like we're in a position where you're lowering expenses the next two quarters and then we're flat, or should we actually grow a little bit off of that base in the first quarter of 2026, just given better revenue growth and opportunities in your markets?

Speaker 2

Catherine, I would say I would guide you towards that consensus number or a touch better for 2026. I think that's a reasonable outlook for us. We sort of got the crosswinds of the efficiencies from the deal, and then the things that Kevin mentioned. You know, we sit in a really good spot right now, geographically, and just as a company, having gotten the conversion behind us, the integration. Still, there's work to do, but it's gone really well. I think what you laid out, I mean, we'll end up with a Q1 run rate, and I think it'll be a pretty clean quarter overall in terms of expenses. There may be a little noise in there, but I think it'll be pretty clean. We'll have merit that'll impact our numbers a little bit towards the middle of the year.

I think that consensus number is probably a pretty good number, maybe a touch better.

Speaker 8

Okay. That's awesome. Very helpful. On the deposit side, it was interesting to see deposits up a little bit this quarter. I know that's some mixed change, but now we'll have the benefit of two cuts. You know, we're hearing from a lot of other banks this quarter that deposit costs are getting more and more competitive. I'm just curious on how you're kind of thinking about deposit costs and betas over the next few cuts relative to what we've seen over the past 100 basis points of cuts.

Speaker 2

On the deposit pricing side is where we've seen the most pressures. The loan side is always competitive, but I feel like any sort of improvement on the deposit side has been grudgingly so. It just feels really tough there. I think our betas on interest-bearing deposits and loans are probably roughly the same in the mid-30% for '26 between now and year-end 2026. The key variable there is just what we see in the deposit side and people's thirst for that funding. As you said, we had a little bit of increase in the cost in Q4. I don't think our CD special, our five-month special, I don't think that's changed in pricing in, I don't know, four or five quarters. We hope to see that change, but right now I wouldn't say there's the prospect of that near-term.

We'll just see what the market and the competition gives us. It's been tough to eke out gains on the funding cost side.

Speaker 8

Makes sense. Great, thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Catherine.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Once again, please press star then one if you would like to ask a question. The next question comes from Janet Lee with TD Cowen.

Speaker 8

Good morning.

Speaker 0

Hey, good morning, Jim.

Speaker 8

Clearly, driving improved returns and increasing profitability, it looks like that is one of the key goals for you, Kevin. In terms of expectations being raised further internally, I guess for Renasant and leading with that increased profitability, aside from the expense side, on the revenue side, can you just give us what you mean by that, as in what kind of examples are there? Is it employees, like the bankers bringing in more low-cost deposits or bringing in more fee-income products? What does that mean?

Speaker 0

Yeah. Thank you. Great, great question. Let's break that down. One thing that's weighed on our profitability maybe is really a little bit of a lack of scale. We made investments, but we didn't quite get the scale that we needed, whether it's our average loan to lender, loan to relationship manager, our average deposit to branch. We've been focusing on looking at performance at the individual or the market level to improve that. When we see our growth happening all throughout our footprint, that's encouraging to us because we're actually doing it with less headcount right now. If we look at what the full-time employees were of Renasant and The First Bancshares before we announced the acquisition and where we are at 9:30, we're down over 300 employees. We're doing it with less. We're having above-average growth, and we're doing it with less employees.

Now, some of that's part of call saves, but some of it's not part of call saves. It's been the ongoing accountability measures we've had. When we talk about the need for improvement and improved profitability, it's absolutely on the expense side, but it's also on the revenue side and getting more scale where we should have it. Whether that's at an individual market level, whether that's a Nashville or the coastal region, an Atlanta, where those are good markets where there's opportunity to grow, or whether it's at an individual lender level, we're holding everybody accountable for a higher level of expectations to support their cost. We really focus on the return of the individual, the return of the market, to determine our success. We've increased our expectations, and our teams are responding to that.

I don't know if that provides enough color, but that gives a little bit of a glimpse as to what we're talking about as it relates to improving the accountability and improving the revenue growth, the performance that comes along with the efforts to reduce expenses.

Speaker 8

Got it. No, thanks for the color. In terms of your loan and deposit growth, you mentioned mid-single-digit sort of growth for you guys on a normalized basis. I get that the payoffs were a little elevated, I mean, not elevated, the other way around. They were smaller than expected. Do you still think that mid-single digits is sort of a good run rate for you, or could we expect a little bit higher in terms of both deposit and loan growth?

Speaker 0

Yeah. I think right now, just given I'd like to get through Q4 before we set any new expectations, just given where the 10-year is and where we think that some payoff elevation could happen in Q4 before we change that. We're still looking at the mid-single digit, which bakes in an uptick of payoffs, prepayments happening in Q4 just due to a lower rate environment, particularly on the 5 and the 10-year spot on the curve. We're still targeting mid-single digit, but I can tell you our focus is to continue to find every good opportunity we can and find a banking relationship with that opportunity, whether it's on the loan or deposit side.

I think Q4 is going to be interesting, at least for us, to see how prepayment speeds react to where we find ourselves in the current curvature of the interest rate curve, the current slope of the interest rate curve.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Janet.

Speaker 5

Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor to Kevin Chapman for any closing comments.

Speaker 0

Thank you. We appreciate your interest in Renasant this morning, and we look forward to continuing our conversations with you throughout the quarter. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. We now disconnect your lines.