Business Description

Business First Bancshares, Inc. is a financial holding company headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the parent company of b1BANK, formerly known as Business First Bank, a Louisiana state banking association and community-based financial institution that offers a full array of banking products and services. We currently operate throughout the state of Louisiana, in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and Houston, from a network of banking centers and loan production offices. Since our founding in 2006, our mission has not changed – we seek to be the financial institution of choice for our markets’ small-to-midsized businesses and their owners and employees. To achieve this goal, we focus on recruiting, retaining and empowering talented bankers who are intimately familiar with and well respected in the communities that they serve, and on providing market-leading products and services that add value to our customers’ businesses. We are currently one of the largest Louisiana-based financial institutions. As of December 31, 2025, on a consolidated basis, we had total assets of $8.2 billion, total loans of $6.2 billion, total deposits of $6.7 billion and shareholders’ equity of $896.9 million. Our common stock is listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “BFST”. Our Business Strategy We believe a bank should be measured by the value it adds to its customers’ businesses. We hold that our customers’ needs are best met through local bankers with deep market experience who are empowered with decision-making authority and supported by centralized risk management practices and advanced technology. We understand our competitive strengths and pursue disciplined growth through the careful selection of markets and our position within those markets. Our expansion strategy primarily consists of identifying and recruiting talented teams of bankers in desirable markets and providing them with a platform to better serve their clients. We believe there is an area stretching from the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex to Jackson, Mississippi, along the I-20 corridor and from Houston, Texas to Mobile, Alabama, along the I-10/12 corridors whose small-to-midsized businesses and high net worth individuals are underserved relative to other parts of the country and are well-suited for our commercial and private banking products and services. We intend to leverage our competitive strengths to take advantage of what we believe are significant growth opportunities both within our existing footprint and in this larger region. Our growth strategy includes: • Expanding Presence in Existing Markets . While we maintain a strong position in almost all of our markets, we are continually working to strengthen our presence in our existing markets. As community bankers, we know that relationships are at the heart of our business, and we are always looking to identify and recruit talented bankers within, as well as outside of, our existing markets. Additionally, we constantly stress deposit growth to our bankers as our ability to grow our loan portfolio within our markets is limited by our ability to fund those loans. In keeping with our branch-lite model, we may consider adding more banking centers or complementary offices in strategic locations in our markets. • Opportunistic Market Expansion. We are well-positioned to expand along the I-10/12 and I-20 corridors, East Texas markets to the west, and into the Jackson and Gulfport/Biloxi, Mississippi markets to the east, as well as growing our markets in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and Houston. We believe these markets have attractive demographics and a significant concentration of small-to-midsized businesses and high net worth individuals that are historically underserved by the banking industry. We intend to focus on growing into these markets as we identify specific opportunities to recruit talented and entrepreneurial teams of local bankers who fit our culture and banking strategy. Except for the acquisition of Texas Citizens Bancorp, Inc. ("TCBI"), and our expansion into the Houston market, each of our entries into new markets to date have been accomplished organically. • Disciplined Acquisition Strategy.…