OptimumBank Holdings Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Record earnings, $1.1B in assets and bridge-to-HUD growth engine

Aiden, Conference Operator: I will now hand the conference over to Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to OptimumBank Holdings, Inc.’s fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. I’m joined here today with our CFO, Elliot Nunez, the chairman of our bank, Moishe Gubin, and the CEO of our bank, Tim Terry. Today, we’re going to spend some time going over some of the details for the last quarter and the last year of OptimumBank’s performance. This quarter marks a defining period for OptimumBank, not just in terms of financial performance, but in terms of strategic progress across the franchise. As of December 31, 2025, we closed the year having surpassed $1.1 billion in total assets while delivering record quarterly and annual earnings, the strongest performance in the company’s history. Beyond the financial results, 2025 was a milestone year for OptimumBank in several important ways.

We celebrated our 25th anniversary, including the honor of ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, a moment that reflects both the longevity of the franchise and its evolution into a scaled, high-performing institution. During the year, we continued to strengthen our leadership lending capabilities with the appointment of Jenny Shapron as Chief Lender, an exceptionally experienced and highly sought-after banking executive, further enhancing our ability to drive disciplined loan growth and deepen client relationships. We also achieved SBA Preferred Lender Program status in the first quarter of 2025, a designation that meaningfully expands our ability to serve small business clients more efficiently while supporting fee income and relationship-based growth. During 2025, we formed a new wholly-owned subsidiary to deliver bridge to HUD and FHA HUD-insured financing solutions for multifamily and healthcare properties.

We expect to roll this platform out in early 2026, leveraging our specialized expertise in skilled nursing, senior housing, and multifamily sectors to further diversify revenue and expand our lending capabilities. Equally important, we made significant progress on the capital markets front. Our largest institutional investor, AllianceBernstein, took deliberate action to increase its economic ownership in OptimumBank, including converting common equity into preferred stock in order to build additional exposure to the company. We view this as a strong, long-term vote of confidence in our strategy, governance, and earnings power. At the same time, one of our directors, Michael Blisko, elected to convert a portion of his Series B preferred equity into common stock, increasing liquidity and market capitalization while remaining below the 9.9% ownership threshold.

This threshold is a regulatory constraint rather than an economic preference, and we are hopeful that regulators will reconsider their position over time, which would allow both Moishe Gubin and Michael Blisko to convert additional Series B preferred equity in the future. The remaining 1,295 shares of Series B preferred are held entirely by long-standing board members, with Moishe Gubin holding 680 shares, convertible into approximately 5.56 million common equity shares, and Michael Blisko holding 615 shares, convertible into approximately 5.02 million common shares. In total, the remaining Series B preferred represents approximately 10.6 million common shares on an if converted basis.

Importantly, under GAAP, this structure now allows us to present standard diluted earnings per share figures that fully and transparently reflect both common and preferred equity, making our capital structure, ownership alignment, and earnings power far cleaner, more understandable, and easier for the market to model. Taken together, these milestones reflect not just growth and scale, but strategic execution, growing institutional confidence, improved liquidity, and enhanced capital markets clarity. I want to give a cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements on today’s call. Based on management’s current expectations, assumptions, and belief about OptimumBank’s business and the environment in which it operates, these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. The call is being recorded, and we refer you to our SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-Q, for additional information regarding risk factors and forward-looking statements.

Additionally, references will be made during this call to non-GAAP financial results. Investors are encouraged to review these non-GAAP financial measures as identified in the presentation deck. Before moving into the results, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the leadership of the team we have installed here today. Earlier, I introduced you to Moishe Gubin, the Chairman of the Board, Tim Terry, our President and CEO, and Elliot Nunez, our Chief Financial Officer. Collectively, these gentlemen have nearly a century of experience, and more details can be found on this page, which I encourage you to take the time to review. The leadership team has built the culture, stability, and performance we’re discussing today. With that, I’ll turn it over to Moishe to begin the presentation.

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: Thank you, Seth, and good morning, everyone. At the close of 2025, I want to start with a simple observation. This was the best year in OptimumBank’s history. This wasn’t just a year of growth, it was a year of elite execution. As you can see on this timeline, the 25th anniversary coincided with our strongest financial performance ever, where we didn’t just cross the $1.1 billion asset threshold, we dominated it, delivering full-year net income of approximately $16.65 million. Our profitability metrics are frankly staggering. We’ve achieved a return on average equity of nearly 15% on a GAAP basis and a massive 21.6% on a core basis. But more important than any single metric is what those results represent.

They reflect a bank that has successfully evolved from a fast-growing community institution into a scaled, high-performance, and durable franchise. We have proven that we can achieve aggressive, best-ever scale while maintaining the same conservative discipline that has defined us for 25 years. We are no longer just participating in the South Florida market, we are leading it. What began with $5 million in equity in November 2000 has grown to $126 million, if you include OCI, as of 12/31/2025. Turning to our fourth quarter performance, the momentum we built throughout the year accelerated further and culminated it in a record quarter. Net income for the fourth quarter was $4.85 million, increasing by about $500,000 from the third quarter and by more than $900,000 from the prior year’s quarter.

This growth was driven by continued core banking strength and disciplined execution across the franchise. The earnings per share grew from $0.18 last year, fourth quarter, to $0.21 this past quarter. We are expecting to be able to maintain a range of $0.18-$0.21 a quarter going forward. Net interest income rose by more than $800,000 quarter-over-quarter to $11.87 million, supported by higher loan balances, disciplined pricing, and continued improvement in funding costs. This past quarter versus same quarter 2024 had an increase of over $2.6 million. We hope to break $50 million this year in net interest income, God willing. While non-interest expenses increased modestly during the quarter as we continued to invest in personnel, technology, and infrastructure, revenue growth once again outpaced those costs.

Non-interest income totaled $1.73 million for the quarter, remaining well above the year ago levels, despite lower loan prepayment activity. Going forward, we expect our staffing to be able to stay flat while being able to support our growth until around $3 billion in assets. As a result, profitability strengthened further, with pre-tax income increasing by approximately $800,000 from the third quarter. These results reflect balanced revenue growth, disciplined cost management, and the operating leverage of a scaled banking platform. On slide 6, we show how our strong fourth quarter results translated into record profitability for the full year. For 2025, pre-tax, pre-provision earnings reached approximately $24.21 million, an increase of about $4.35 million or nearly 22% compared to 2024. This reflects both strong revenue growth and disciplined expense management.

Our core return on average equity for the year was approximately 21.6%, with fourth quarter core ROE of 22.9%. These are exceptional levels of profitability, particularly for a bank that continues to grow at this pace. I am very proud of these year-over-year numbers. To go from $4.2 million in 2021 to $24 million is 600% growth in four years. Slide 7 captures the continued transformation of OptimumBank as both a franchise and an organization. Our employee base expanded further during 2025 as we invested in talent across lending, operations, and technology to support our growing platform. These investments are intentional and are already translating into stronger execution and operating leverage.

On the balance sheet side, total assets grew to approximately $1.11 billion at year-end, representing nearly $179 million year-over-year growth during 2025 and a multi-year compound annual growth rate of 33.3% since 2021. From a profitability standpoint, full year net interest margin reached 4.28%, up 45 basis points from 2024, while core pre-tax, pre-provision earnings of $24.2 million demonstrate how investments in people, systems, and lending capabilities are driving sustained performance. This slide also reflects the continued evolution of our franchise footprint. Each phase of our expansion has been deliberate and aligned with where our customers live and do business, supporting relationship-driven growth and long-term franchise value.

Collectively, these elements reinforce a simple message: OptimumBank is operating at a higher level of scale, efficiency, and capability than at any point in its history, and we are well positioned for the next phase of disciplined growth. With that, I’ll turn it over to Elliot to walk through the financial drivers behind these results in more detail.

Elliot Nunez, Chief Financial Officer, OptimumBank Holdings: Thank you, Moishe. As you discussed in slide number 5, the fourth quarter reflected strong growth in net income and net interest income. I’ll build on that overview by walking through the underlying revenue drivers, funding costs, and expense trends shown on slide number 8. Total interest income increased during the quarter, driven by continued loan growth, disciplined pricing, and strong asset yields. Diversified interest income streams remained consistent and supported the expansion of our earnings asset base. When we look at non-interest income, it totaled $1.73 million for the quarter. While lower than the third quarter due to the reduced loan prepayment activity, core fee income, including service charges, remained strong and well above year-ago levels. Funding costs continued to improve on a rate basis. While total interest expense increased modestly due to the balance growth, lower deposit pricing and disciplined funding mix supported margin expansion.

Total non-interest expense increased to $6.74 million, reflecting planned investments in personnel and technology to support growth and scale. Importantly, revenue growth continued to outpace expense growth, resulting in $794,000 sequential increase in pre-tax income. This translated into sequential earnings growth for shareholders, with basic earnings per share increasing to approximately $0.42, undiluted earnings per share increasing to approximately $0.21 for the quarter.... Now looking at slide 9, here, we see that it provides a year-over-year view of our full year performance and highlights the scale of OptimumBank’s earnings growth in 2025. Net income for the year totaled $16.65 million, an increase of $3.52 million or nearly 27% compared to 2024. This profitability was driven by strong balance sheet growth, improved margins, and disciplined expense management.

Net interest income increased by $7.9 million year-over-year, reflecting continued loan growth and net interest margin expansion. We also achieved meaningful improvement in funding costs during the year. Total interest expense declined on a year-over-year basis, reflecting disciplined liability management and an improved fundings mix. In addition, total non-interest income increased by $2.15 million compared to 2024, driven by growth in service charges, SBA-related activity, and other fee-based revenue streams. Taken altogether, these full-year results confirm that our strategies focus on managing funding costs, expanding high-quality loan growth, and scaling fee-based income, which are delivering significant improvements in core profitability and the bottom line. Now, as we move over to slide number 10, let us review the growth and momentum across our key areas of loans, deposits, and non-interest income.

Gross loans ended the year at $958.79 million at December 31, 2025, reflecting a year-over-year growth of $154.55 million or 19.2% as compared to December 31, 2024. Loan growth remained well-diversified and relationship-driven, consistent with our focus on asset quality and disciplined underwriting. Our loan growth compound annual growth rate since 2021 is 39.75%, and our yield on loans averaged 6.98% for the year, reflecting strong pricing discipline and portfolio performance. On the deposit side, total deposits ended the year at $931.75 million, representing year-over-year growth of $159.56 million or 20.7%. Non-interest bearing demand deposits totaled $266.52 million or 28.6% of total deposits.

The cost of interest-bearing deposits averaged 3.47%, supporting a favorable funding mix across all deposits. We also continue to see strong momentum in non-interest income. For 2025, total non-interest income was $6.77 million, representing 46.5% year-over-year growth and a 39.79% compound annual growth rate since 2021. This growth continues to be driven by service charges, SBA-related activity, and other relationship-based fee income, reflecting the increasing diversification and scalability of our revenue mix. Next, on slide 11, we highlight our consistently well-managed credit trends. Our allowance for credit losses to loans ratio stood at 1.07% at December 31, 2025, reflecting appropriate reserving levels and continued discipline in credit risk management.

Our Non-Performing Assets to total assets ratio is stood at 0.32%, positioning us well below national peer levels and underscoring the conservative underwriting standards applied across the loan portfolio. Most importantly, our net charge-offs to average loans for the year were 0.04%, reinforcing the high quality and conservative underwriting that define our loan book. Turning to the balance sheet now on slide 12, we closed 2025, having surpassed the $1 billion asset milestone. Total assets increased by $178.75 million year-over-year to $1.11 billion at December 31, 2025. This strong asset growth was well-funded, with total deposits increasing by $159.56 million to $931.75 million over the same period.

On the funding side, we maintained strong balance sheet discipline, supported by ample on and off-balance sheet liquidity. Finally, reflecting on strong earnings retention and disciplined capital management, total stockholders’ equity increased by $18.741 million year over year to $121.9 million at December 31, 2025. Finally, as we move over to slide 13, we wrap up with a summary of our compelling investment opportunity. Our rapid organic growth continues to significantly outpace peers, as demonstrated by our loan growth compound annual growth rate of 39.75% and our deposit growth compound annual growth rate of 33.6% from December 31, 2021 through December 31, 2025. Tangible book value per diluted share increased to $5.18 at year-end.

The efficiency ratio remains highly competitive at 49.59%, well below the peer levels of 67.3%. Our net interest margin of 4.28% also compares favorably to the peer level of 3.83%, highlighting the strength of our earning capacity relative to peers. In short, this was another strong and disciplined year. We maintained solid capital, a well-managed balance sheet, and the flexibility to continue delivering consistent long-term value.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: ... Moishe, now back to you.

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: Thank you, Elliot. As we conclude today’s presentation, I want to reflect on the significance of this year for OptimumBank. In 2025, we marked our 25th anniversary, and we did so while delivering the strongest financial performance in the company’s history. For a quarter century, OptimumBank has remained focused on disciplined growth, conservative risk management, and building long-term relationships with our customers and communities. This year’s results demonstrate that those principles continue to scale effectively as the franchise grows. Looking ahead, our priorities remain unchanged. We will continue to deploy capital prudently, invest in our people and infrastructure, and position the bank to deliver sustainable long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I’ll turn it back to Seth to open the call for questions.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Thank you, Moishe. Before we open it up for questions, I’d like to thank Moishe, Elliot, and Tim for their insights today. OptimumBank continues to deliver strong financial performance, and we appreciate those taking the time to learn more about us. Now, let us open it up for questions.

Aiden, Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand now. If you have dialed into today’s call, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. As we currently have no questions in the queue, I will hand it back to Seth to handle the written Q&A.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Thank you, Aiden. Appreciate that. Well, we’ve got quite a number of questions that have come in over email. I encourage those that are watching and listening that, should they have any additional questions, they can feel free to email me at this moment. My email address for anybody that needs it is [email protected]. And, before we get started with a few of the written questions, I see that one of our analysts, Ken Billingsley, has a question. So, let me turn it over to Ken for our first question. Ken, I think we got you.

Ken Billingsley, Analyst: Can you hear me?

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Yeah, we can hear you, Ken. Go ahead.

Ken Billingsley, Analyst: Great. Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. I just could you expand on the opportunities that, for the bridge to HUD financing FHA and, just the platform for?

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Sure

Ken Billingsley, Analyst: ... loans to skilled nursing and senior housing? Can you talk about the potential and where you see that fits in and how large that can get?

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: Oh, yeah. So Ken, thank you, thank you for the coverage. Thank you for the question. And so, this is Moishe. So the strategy behind it, first of all, just to give you an idea, is, you know, our bank as a standalone bank is thriving. And one of our areas where we’re thriving is the nursing home space, skilled nursing facility space, their need for accounts receivable financing, and separately, for lending on property companies, you know, the real landlords. So we started doing that. That’s my background, as most people that are on this call probably know.

We’re well known in the space, and we’ve so far accumulated, you know, between 50 and 100 clients at the bank that have accounts receivable loans or facilities, and it’s continuing to grow. We go to the conferences. We had stayed away from the property lending because of the risk associated with the building getting decertified. That’s a big risk for a bank. We stayed away from that for the most part, but we started doing it recently, knowing full well that the transition would be to go from the regular prop co loan to a bridge or a prop co plus a bridge and then go take it to HUD, where that takes us out.

So what we expect to occur, and I can elaborate on this if anybody wants to talk about it on separately offline, I’m glad to go into the real details on how this thing grows. But easily, easily, this would bring value to the holding company as a separate vertical outside of the bank. All the transactions, as far as, you know, bank accounts, escrows, and all the servicing, the bank would be earning fee income and would have non-interest-bearing deposits at the bank. And our side of our balance sheet, that’s a separate vertical. We expect that easily to get to, within, like, two years, three years, to get to $250 million, and exponentially, that portfolio should grow.

And in the long run, we expect to be able to make, you know, a SOFR five, SOFR six handle on the interest rate. And in the long run, the residual value will be the servicing that the bank is going to have, where we can build up a whole servicing portfolio, and that should hopefully grow $1 billion, $2 billion, even larger. Really, sky is the limit here. We have good relationships. We’re well known in the marketplace, and it should grow. The way we’re going to handle the growth is we will be lending based on HUD standards. That’s going to be the HUD lending protocols, which is not what the bank does. Banks, you know, we’re doing...

You know, we have a loan policies on how we lend. On the HUD protocols, we’re going to be following along their guidelines, with only exceptions based on, you know, look-back period of how long we’re looking at for the financials or, you know, some minor thing that we’re able to underwrite to, and again, we expect to be able to get a line of credit from at this point, you know, the big banks that want to lend us, CIBC, Huntington Bank, and others that potentially would be a lender for that vertical. And we expect it to be a really strong contributor to our bottom line. So Ken, I hope that answered your question.

Ken Billingsley, Analyst: It was helpful. Thank you very much.

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: You’re welcome.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Okay, Aiden, unless you have any others from any of the analysts, I’m going to move on to a couple of email questions that we’ve received.

Aiden, Conference Operator: Yes, there’s no one else in the queue, so please go ahead.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Okay, fantastic. Very good. So, first email question that we have, has to do with our EPS. So, it says, "You were guided to roughly $0.18-$0.21 quarterly EPS going forward. What assumptions on loan growth, margin, and funding costs underpin that range?

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: Okay, so, we’re guiding to 18-21 because that’s what we’re currently running. Like, like, we said earlier in the remarks, we really don’t expect labor or payroll to increase other than inflationary cost increases. We expect that to stay relatively flat. So everything going forward, you know, for the next $1 billion of growth, we should be able to add mainly to the bottom line. Again, I add back provisioning, as we haven’t had a bad loan in many, many years, so I add that back in my, in my thought process. So I would say that we really expect to grow our loan portfolio, between 25, 25% is really the bogey, but we, we expect to beat that.

The funding, we expect to be able to maintain our spread that we have, which today is, like, 4... Our NIM is, like, a 4.28, which was what we said. We expect to be able to keep that. All loans. We still have loans that are repricing, that are from where rates were at 5%, that are getting repriced at, you know, 7+. And now all of our new loans are at still SOFR 350, SOFR 400, for the most part. So we expect our, we expect our, margins to stay the same and to model out, we’re just going to be modeling out the, the increase in, in interest income between the top line and the cost of our money. And so that’s why we’re giving that guidance.

We expect to beat it, but even more so, first quarter will really be the best judge. Second quarter, we’ll know really how the whole year, and I’ll probably revise what we expect the year number to be, as, you know, $0.80 seems like something that we should be able to beat. And so we’ll see, we’ll see where that goes.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Okay, very good. I got another question here, regarding loan growth. Question is: "Loan growth was around $155 million in 2025, seemingly around 20%. What is sustainable long-term growth rate without compromising on credit quality?

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: So again, our portfolio and our borrowing base, the people that come to us, our borrowers, are loyal customers of the bank. Like, we had at the client appreciation dinner, we called it a family reunion, as our borrowers are really a part of the family. And so, we really expect that our growth should be, you know, 25% or higher, and I don’t see us having a problem doing that. I think we already closed out January with more than $60 million in loans out the door. So we’re already on our way to hitting and breaking, you know, 25%.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Very good. The next question we have here is regarding AllianceBernstein and their increased economic exposure via preferred equity or preferred stock. How should we interpret that, and could further conversions occur?

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: Okay, that’s a good question because we’re trying to make it simpler for the investor, so they understand our preferreds. Our preferreds was only a mechanism to be able to allow certain insiders, like myself, to own more than 9.9 and not get in trouble with the regulators. The regulators have not approved where anybody can own more than 9.9, and so the preferreds really just act as a non-voting common. The reason why we use preferreds back when we used them was that our original charter only allowed for common and preferred and was never allowed for any other kind of series of equity. So that’s how we did it, and we continue to—it just sits there.

As we continue, we expect everybody to convert at some point to common stock. New shares that we issue on new investors that come in, we continue to hold firm and not sell stock. That’s dilutive to our current shareholders. We know that we’re worth a lot more than our stock is trading at. So when we give somebody book or a little bit above book, that’s a great discount for them also. And so we’re going to hold firm on that, and as more shares get sold, more preferreds could get converted. And really, we understand that the shareholder out there might have a hard time understanding, ’cause it is kind of complicated, and it wasn’t supposed to be.

It was only just supposed to be a guy like me that wanted to support the bank that I love, and I had no other way to put money into equity outside of, you know, common that was voting. We had to create something for me to buy the stock and put the equity in the company. And that’s what that is. Hopefully, that answers the question.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: ... Okay, so Moishe, we have one person that asked a series of questions that is somewhat aligned with the question regarding AllianceBernstein. So I’m gonna do my best to kind of simplify some of these questions, but they go hand in glove to what we were just talking about here. The questions start with regarding the 10.6 million shares of Series B preferred that you and one of our other directors, Michael Blisko, own. And the question talks about dilution and timing of potential conversion, and just walking through what that looks like in terms of EPS versus diluted EPS, and how investors should think about all of that.

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: Well, that’s, that’s why we made a change, I think it was last quarter, and that’s how it was presented. Really, for the investor public, the easiest way to follow what our numbers are is by looking at the Diluted EPS. That Diluted EPS, and this is what we’re giving guidance on, is $0.18-$0.21, is the true number. There’s nothing else confusing that number. That’s showing all the shares between common and converted preferred divided by the net income. And that’s the easiest thing.

We restated in the last quarter’s deck, and now this quarter, year-end deck, you’re able to see what the diluted earnings per share was, and you can see how our growth has been and how we’ve increased the return by share, quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: So I think that answers, for the most part, that series of questions. I’m just gonna ask the question has to do with how that instrument has supported the growth over the years. When did sort of this Series B Preferred start? And you already accomplished why it started, but how has that supported the bank’s capital position?

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: Well, again, you know, most bank investors understand, right, that you need capital based on ratios. You need to have the capital to handle growth, handle a balance sheet. And we’ve been holding to about 10% as a minimum, maybe 9.75% as a minimum. And we’ve been running over 11, actually. So we have the capital we need to do what we gotta do. But, you know, some of these new objectives, the HUD, bridge to HUD, and a couple other verticals that we’re hoping to get accomplished in 2026, we will need to raise equity, or sub-debt, or a mixture of the two. And our friends at Piper Sandler, I’m sure, will be glad to help us with that, as well as the other guys that we deal with.

That being said, you know, this is as simple as it comes. You know, a balance sheet that’s producing money in the door, with no dividend yield. The money in the door is, is for us, you know, the earnings per share, or they are rather, rather the ROE, GAAP ROE, you know, 14, 15, 16%. Core is probably twenty-something%, like we talked about. So for me, the cost of money is that, if I sell equity, the cost of equity is 20%, but I’m able to take that dollar and lend it out 10 times, and we’re making a 4% spread, that’s a 40% return on a, you know, on a 17%, 20% cost, which is good.

Sub-debt, of course, cost is 6.5%-7%, and the money’s out the door with, again, the 4.4% NIM. You know, you’re bringing in, you know, again, 40% on the cost of 7. That should help us make our earnings grow and handle the growth. You know, we have just regular organic growth that’s coming in the door every day of the week. And so that equity is what supports our growth at the end of the day.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Okay, very good. I got two more questions here that that came in by email, and then we’ll hand it back to see if anybody else in the audience has questions before wrapping up. Second to last emailed question is: Which sectors are driving loan growth today, and are you seeing any emerging stress in South Florida commercial real estate or healthcare segments?

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: So to answer that, I... This question’s been asked in other earnings calls. You know, the starting point is to understand our customer. Our customer, I call it the cult following. The people that bank by us are friends. They’re part of the family, and we don’t have the stresses, and we don’t have, we don’t have bad loans. We don’t have, we don’t have that. And it’s based on relationship at the end of the day. You know, these guys might have a little bit of stress in their portfolio or what they do, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t hurt our bank because they don’t wanna hurt us, and so they will keep paying us. And we have good credit admin to start with.

Tim and Elliot and Ryan and others from the management team and the worker bees themselves do a real good job. We’re very proud of the team that we have. That being said, the growth has been the same since at least the last five years, which is relationships. People are constantly emailing us scenarios on loans in South Florida and Florida, and then other areas. I mean, we look, we look like our community, which is, you know, five counties in South Florida, but as well as the Jewish communities all over the country. And so we, we, we’re, we’re, we’re amongst the people.

You know, people come to us and talk to us, and like today, we’re in Tampa at an event, and we’re supporting the local communities and lending money locally. And that’s what’s been driving our growth, and that should continue, and that’s scalable. In the long run, that’s scalable probably through $3 billion, $5 billion, $10 billion of assets.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: ... Okay, very good. Last emailed question I have here for you, Moishe, is: as you continue to scale beyond $1 billion in assets, what balance sheet or regulatory thresholds should investors be mindful of that could influence growth pace, capital needs, or profitability?

Moishe Gubin, Chairman of the Board, OptimumBank Holdings: So I would say for this, in detail, and whoever sent the question, feel free to reach out to us. You know, Elliot probably can get more detailed, but, the most important thing for an investor to know is we’ve taken a point of view of building infrastructure to support our growth. And so we already have for us, the cost of doing business is the same cost that we’re gonna have when we double or triple what we are today. So for an investor, you look at our results today, our results are only gonna improve. We’re going to grow without it costing us more money to grow. And so from that point of view, I wouldn’t be wary at all as an investor, at least 2 billion or 3 billion. And I think...

You know, even from the accounting department, I think we’re all set through $3 billion. I don’t know past that. Elliot can elaborate on that now, or somebody could just reach out afterwards, and we’re glad to talk about it. But we’re ready to go. I mean, we could keep growing, and it’s not gonna cost us any. Other than the cost of money, it’s not gonna cost us any real dollars and cents that would impact an investor.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Okay, well, I don’t have any more emailed questions, so I think where we’re gonna leave it at this point is, Aiden, if you see any further questions either coming in from your side or any of our analysts that would like to pipe up and ask any questions live, we can certainly do that. If Elliot or Tim have any additional thoughts that they would like to share with us, we can certainly close out with them as well.

Aiden, Conference Operator: Absolutely.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Otherwise, we’re gonna wrap up.

Aiden, Conference Operator: Yeah, I can just give our instructions again. If you would like to ask a question here, please raise your hand. If you have dialed into today’s call, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Please stand by while we see if anyone would like to join the queue. No one has queued up so far, so I will pass it back to you, Seth.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Very good, Aiden. Well, I don’t have anything more from our side. Elliot or Tim, do you have any final words of wisdom?

Ken Billingsley, Analyst: No, sir.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Okay.

Elliot Nunez, Chief Financial Officer, OptimumBank Holdings: I do not.

Seth Denison, Managing Director of Investor Relations, OptimumBank Holdings: Moishe, Elliot, Tim, we appreciate everybody’s insights today and appreciate everybody joining us, and we look forward to having you guys on for our first quarter 2026 call. Feel free to reach out anytime. Thank you.

Aiden, Conference Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.