Primis Financial Corp. Reports Strong Results for the First Quarter of 2026

Declares Quarterly Cash Dividend of $0.10 Per Share

MCLEAN, Va., April 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Primis Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: FRST) ("Primis" or the "Company"), and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Primis Bank (the "Bank"), today reported net income available to common shareholders of $7.3 million, or $0.30 per diluted share, for the three months ended March 31, 2026, compared to net income available to common shareholders of $22.6 million, or $0.92 per diluted share, for the three months ended March 31, 2025.  Operating net income⁽¹⁾ available to common shareholders for the three months ended March 31, 2026 was $8.1 million, or $0.33 per diluted share, compared to operating net income⁽¹⁾ available to common shareholders of $3.6 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, for the same period in 2025.

Q1 2026 Accomplishments

The Company demonstrated strong profitability in the first quarter of 2026.  Significant areas of improvement year-over-year are detailed in the chart below:

Commenting on the results, Dennis J. Zember, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, stated, "We are excited to see the progress on our profitability initiatives in what is generally a seasonally slow quarter.  We believe we are extremely well-positioned with a stronger balance sheet and demonstrated operating leverage versus a year ago.  Our expectations for a robust level of profitability in 2026 are on track as we continue operating our plan to maximize results."

Division Updates

The first quarter of 2026 demonstrated progress in key areas that are expected to drive full-year profitability in 2026. The following discussion highlights recent progress for each of these strategies:

Core Community Bank

The core Bank's 24 banking offices in Virginia and Maryland represent almost two-thirds of the Company's total balance sheet.  Management believes the core Bank drives significant value for the Company with a stable deposit base and strong core profitability:

• The core Bank has low concentrations of investor CRE (25% of total loans and only 197% of regulatory capital)
• $66 million of closed loans in the first quarter of 2026 with a pipeline of $123 million as of March 31, 2026.
• Cost of deposits of 1.59% in the first quarter of 2026 compared to 1.85% in the same quarter in 2025. 
• Zero brokered deposits.
• A proprietary banking app for commercial depositors that drives new sales independent of lending efforts in and around the Company's footprint.

Approximately 23% of the core Bank's deposit base are noninterest bearing deposits, supported with what management believes is the region's best and most unique technology including the Bank's proprietary V1BE service, which directly supports more than $200 million of mostly commercial clients in the Bank's footprint.  Approximately $60 million of checking accounts are associated with customers that use V1BE regularly. 

Primis Mortgage

Primis Mortgage had closed mortgage volume of $367 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 122% compared to the same quarter in 2025.  Construction-to-permanent loan volume was $26 million in the first quarter of 2026 versus $4 million in the same period in 2025.  Pre-tax earnings related to Primis Mortgage were approximately $2.1 million for the first quarter of 2026, up substantially from earnings of $0.8 million in the first quarter of 2025. 

Mortgage Warehouse

Mortgage warehouse lending continued to show strong growth in the first quarter of 2026.  Outstanding loan balances at March 31, 2026 were $460 million, up 300% from $115 million at March 31, 2025.  Average loan balances were $342 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 14% from $300 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 and up 499% from $57 million in the first quarter of 2025.  Mortgage warehouse also funded on average approximately 12% of its balance sheet with associated customer noninterest bearing deposit balances during the first quarter of 2026.  

Panacea Financial

Panacea's growth remained strong through the first quarter of 2026 with loans outstanding of $600 million, including loans held for sale, up 10% compared to December 31, 2025.  The loans held for sale at March 31, 2026 are expected to be sold early in the second quarter of 2026 with ongoing flow loan sales thereafter allowing for continued high growth rates without straining the Company's balance sheet.  At the end of the first quarter of 2026, Panacea customer deposits totaled $153 million, up 63% from March 31, 2025.  Panacea is the number one ranked "Bank for doctors" on Google and banks over 7,500 professionals and practices nationwide.     

Digital Platform

Funding for the national strategies is provided exclusively by the Bank's digital platform powered by what the Bank believes is one of the safest and most functional deposit accounts in the nation.  Because of the scalability of the platform, there is significantly less pressure on the core Bank to provide this funding and risk the profitable, decades old relationships with core customers.

The platform ended the first quarter of 2026 with approximately $1.0 billion of deposits with a cost of deposits of 3.79% compared to $1.0 billion at March 31, 2025 with a cost of 4.36%.  The platform also successfully grew business accounts in 2026 with small business balances reaching $28 million at March 31, 2026, up substantially from $16 million at December 31, 2025. Over 1,200 of our digital accounts have come from referrals from other customers and approximately 81% of our consumer accounts have been with the Bank for over two years.

Net Interest Income

Net interest income in the first quarter of 2026 was $32 million, up 22%, versus $26 million in the first quarter of 2025.  As noted above, the Company's net interest margin improved to 3.43% in the first quarter of 2026 compared to 3.15% in the same quarter of 2025 with the expansion driven by robust earning asset growth funded at attractive incremental margins.

Yield on earnings assets in the first quarter of 2026 increased six basis points and three basis points versus the fourth quarter of 2025 and first quarter of 2025, respectively.  Yield on investments increased 124 basis points year-over-year largely due to the previously announced portfolio restructuring and offsetting declines in yield on loans and yield on other earning assets driven by recent rate cuts. 

Cost of deposits in the Bank have benefitted from the focus on growing noninterest bearing deposit balances as well as the core Bank's management of interest expense.  In the first quarter of 2026, the Company reported cost of interest-bearing deposits of 2.65% compared to 2.93% in the same quarter in 2025.  Cost of funds was 2.46% in the first quarter of 2026, down 21 basis points from 2.67% in the first quarter of 2025.

Noninterest Income

Noninterest income was $14 million in the first quarter of 2026 versus $32 million in the first quarter of 2025 with a substantial portion of the decrease driven by a $25 million gain from Panacea Financial Holdings investment in the first quarter of 2025.  Excluding this item, noninterest income was $14 million in the first quarter of 2026 versus $7 million in the first quarter of 2025.  Mortgage related income grew 92% to $11 million in the first quarter of 2026 compared to $6 million in the same quarter in 2025.  As previously disclosed, the Company is currently in the process of restructuring its bank-owned life insurance portfolio which is anticipated to improve noninterest income by approximately $1.2 million annually beginning late in the second quarter of 2026.

The Company reported gain on sale income of $0.6 million related to the sale of the guaranteed portion of SBA loans in the first quarter of 2026 for no similar gain on sale income in the first quarter of 2025.  Approximately $45 thousand of the gain on sale income was attributable to the core Bank in the first quarter of 2026 with the remainder driven by the Panacea Division.  The Company anticipates increasing SBA gain on sale income to between $500 thousand to $600 thousand from the core Bank beginning in the second quarter of 2026.

Noninterest Expense

Noninterest expense was $34 million for the first quarter of 2026, compared to $33 million for the same quarter of 2025.  The following table reflects the core operating expense burden at the Company, net of mortgage related and Panacea division impacts.

Core operating expense burden, as defined above, was $22 million in the first quarter of 2026 versus $21 million in the first quarter of 2025.   As previously disclosed, the first quarter of 2026 includes a full quarter of lease expense, net of reduced depreciation expense, of approximately $1.4 million from the Company's sale leaseback transaction executed in the fourth quarter of 2025.  Excluding the effects of that transaction, core operating expense burden would have been $20.6 million, a decrease of 1% from the year-ago period.

The Company believes it still has substantial ability to contain expenses while growing revenue as it aggressively adopts artificial intelligence tools and agents to drive productivity.  Each department across the Bank has identified a list of high priority use cases for AI that collectively is projected to yield over 200 people-hours per week of time savings and efficiencies, many of which are in the early stages of implementation.

Loan Portfolio and Asset Quality

Loans held for investment increased to $3.4 billion at March 31, 2026 compared to $3.3 billion at December 31, 2025 and $3.0 billion at March 31, 2025.  Primary drivers in these levels include:

• Core Bank loans averaged approximately $2.0 billion in the first quarter of 2026, flat from the fourth quarter of 2025 
• Panacea Financial loans grew $56 million through the end of first quarter of 2026 to $600 million including loans held for sale at March 31, 2026. 
• Mortgage warehouse outstandings increased significantly to $460 million at the end of the first quarter of 2026 compared to $318 million at December 31, 2025. Approved lines ended the first quarter of 2026 at $1.37 billion across 139 customers.
• Loan balances associated with the consumer loan program declined to $82 million at March 31, 2026, net of fair value discounts, compared to $132 million at March 31, 2025.  Importantly, loans in promotional periods with full deferral now represent an immaterial amount of the portfolio which is amortizing down over time.

Nonperforming assets, excluding portions guaranteed by the SBA, were 2.24% of total assets at March 31, 2026 compared to 2.03% of total assets at December 31, 2025.  Nonperforming assets increased $13.6 million from December 31, 2025 to $100 million at March 31, 2026 due to one relationship that was 90 days past due at quarter-end but subsequently made multiple payments to reduce its delinquency.  Substandard and nonaccrual loans were essentially flat linked-quarter.

The Company recorded a provision for credit losses of $1.5 million for the first quarter of 2026 compared to a provision for credit losses of $2.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 and $1.6 million for the first quarter of 2025.  Approximately $0.1 million of the first quarter 2026 provision was related to growth in the loan portfolio. Another $0.4 million was related to the Consumer Program portfolio which was down from $0.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2025.  Lastly, changes in impairment amounts for individually evaluated loans contributed $0.6 million to the provision in the first quarter of 2026.  Core net charge-offs as a percentage of average loans were six basis points, flat with the same period a year ago and up one basis point from the fourth quarter of 2025.

As a percentage of loans held for investment, the allowance for credit losses was 1.37% at the end of the first quarter of 2026 compared to 1.45% at the end of the first quarter of 2025. Total allowance and discounts on the consumer loan program portfolio totaled $6.7 million at March 31, 2026, which represents 8% of gross principal balance and 358% of loans more than one period delinquent as of that date.

Deposits and Funding

Total deposits at March 31, 2026 were $3.4 billion, up $0.2 billion, or 8% when compared to the same period in 2025. Noninterest bearing demand deposits were $541 million at March 31, 2026, an increase of 19% compared to balances at March 31, 2025.  The Company had FHLB advances totaling $230 million outstanding at March 31, 2026 up from $25 million at December 31, 2025 and versus no advances at March 31, 2025.  

Taxes

Tax expense for the first quarter of 2026 was $3 million.  Included in this expense was $0.8 million of tax expense related to the Panacea Financial Holdings deconsolidation in 2025 and is considered nonrecurring.  Excluding this amount, tax expense for the first quarter of 2026 was $2.3 million or an effective tax rate of 21.8% of pre-tax earnings.  The Company expects the effective tax rate to be at a similar level for the rest of 2026.

Shareholders' Equity

Tangible book value per common share⁽¹⁾ at the end of the first quarter of 2026 was $13.47, an increase of $2.07 or 18% from levels reported at March 31, 2025.  Tangible common equity⁽¹⁾ ended the first quarter of 2026 at $334 million, or 8.02% of tangible assets⁽¹⁾. 

The Board of Directors declared a dividend of $0.10 per share payable on May 22, 2026 to shareholders of record on May 8, 2026.  This is Primis' fifty-eighth consecutive quarterly dividend. 

About Primis Financial Corp.

As of March 31, 2026, Primis had $4.3 billion in total assets, $3.4 billion in total loans held for investment and $3.4 billion in total deposits. Primis Bank provides a range of financial services to individuals and small- and medium-sized businesses through twenty-four full-service branches in Virginia and Maryland and provides services to customers through certain online and mobile applications.

Primis Financial Corp., NASDAQ Symbol FRST
Website: www.primisbank.com

Conference Call

The Company's management will host a conference call to discuss its first quarter results on Friday, April 24, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. (ET). A live Webcast of the conference call is available at the following website: https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/286254303.  Participants may also call 1-888-330-3573 and ask for the Primis Financial Corp. call.  A replay of the teleconference will be available for 7 days by calling 1-800-770-2030 and providing Replay Access Code 4440924.

Non-GAAP Measures

Statements included in this press release include non-GAAP financial measures and should be read along with the accompanying tables. Primis uses non-GAAP financial measures to analyze its performance. The measures entitled operating net income (loss) available to Primis' common shareholders; pre-tax pre-provision operating earnings; operating return on average assets; pre-tax pre-provision operating return on average assets; operating return on average equity; operating return on average tangible equity; operating efficiency ratio; operating earnings per share – basic; operating earnings per share – diluted; tangible book value per share; tangible common equity; tangible common equity to tangible assets; and core net interest margin are not measures recognized under GAAP and therefore are considered non-GAAP financial measures. We use the term "operating" to describe a financial measure that excludes income or expense considered to be non-recurring in nature.  Items identified as non-operating are those that, when excluded from a reported financial measure, provide management or the reader with a measure that may be more indicative of forward-looking trends in our business.  A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures is provided in the Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Items table.

Management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide additional useful information about Primis that allows management and investors to evaluate the ongoing operating results, financial strength and performance of Primis and provide meaningful comparison to its peers. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as an alternative to any measure of performance or financial condition as promulgated under GAAP, and investors should consider Primis' performance and financial condition as reported under GAAP and all other relevant information when assessing the performance or financial condition of Primis.  Non-GAAP financial measures are not standardized and, therefore, it may not be possible to compare these measures with other companies that present measures having the same or similar names.

Non-GAAP financial measures have limitations as analytical tools, and investors should not consider them in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of the results or financial condition as reported under GAAP.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release and certain of our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission contain statements that constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of, and subject to the protections of, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Such statements can generally be identified by such words as "may," "plan," "contemplate," "anticipate," "believe," "intend," "continue," "expect," "project," "predict," "estimate," "could," "should," "would," "will," and other similar words or expressions of the future or otherwise regarding the outlook for the Company's future business and financial performance and/or the performance of the banking industry and economy in general. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, our expectations regarding our future operating and financial performance, including the preliminary estimated financial and operating information presented herein, which is subject to adjustment; our outlook and long-term goals for future growth and new offerings and services; our expectations regarding net interest margin; expectations on our growth strategy, expense management, capital management and future profitability; expectations on credit quality and performance; and the assumptions underlying our expectations.

Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from the future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the information known to, and current beliefs and expectations of, the Company's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to: instability in global economic conditions and geopolitical matters; the impact of current and future economic and market conditions generally (including seasonality) and in the financial services industry, nationally and within our primary market areas; adverse developments in borrower industries; changes in interest rates, inflation, loan demand, real estate values, or competition, as well as labor shortages and supply chain disruptions; the impact of tariffs, trade policies, and trade wars (including reduced consumer spending, lower economic growth or recession, reduced demand for U.S. exports, disruptions to supply chains, and decreased demand for other banking products and services); the Company's ability to implement its various strategic and growth initiatives, including its recently established Panacea Financial Division, digital banking platform, V1BE fulfillment service, Mortgage Warehouse division and Primis Mortgage Company, as well as with respect to use and implementation of artificial intelligence; competitive pressures among financial institutions increasing significantly (including as a result of technological changes and the use of artificial intelligence); changes in applicable laws, rules, or regulations, including changes to statutes, regulations or regulatory policies or practices; legislative, regulatory or supervisory actions related to so‑called "de‑banking," including any new prohibitions, requirements or enforcement priorities that could affect customer relationships, compliance obligations, or operational practices; changes in management's plans for the future; credit risk associated with our lending activities; changes in accounting principles, policies, or guidelines; adverse results from current or future litigation, regulatory examinations or other legal and/or regulatory actions; potential impacts of adverse developments in the banking industry, including impacts on customer confidence, deposit outflows, liquidity and the regulatory response thereto; potential increases in the provision for credit losses; our ability to identify and address increased cybersecurity risks, including those impacting vendors and other first parties; fraud or misconduct by internal or external actors, which we may not be able to prevent, detect or mitigate; acts of God or of war or other conflicts, civil unrest, acts of terrorism, pandemics or other catastrophic events that may affect general economic conditions; action or inaction by the federal government, including as a result of any prolonged government shutdown; and other general competitive, economic, political, and market factors, including those affecting our business, operations, pricing, products, or services.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which such statements are made. These forward-looking statements are based upon information presently known to the Company's management and are inherently subjective, uncertain and subject to change due to any number of risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, the risks and other factors set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, under the captions "Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors," and in the Company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Primis Financial Corp.