Business Description

Southern First Bancshares, Inc. (the “Company”) was incorporated in March 1999 under the laws of South Carolina and is a bank holding company registered under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 (the “BHCA”). Our primary business is to serve as the holding company for Southern First Bank (the “Bank”), a South Carolina state bank. The Bank is a commercial bank with eight retail offices located in the Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston markets of South Carolina, three retail offices in the Raleigh, Greensboro, and Charlotte markets of North Carolina and one retail office in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, we opened our Dream Mortgage Center, a loan production office, located in Columbia, South Carolina during 2023 and expect to open a retail office in Cary, North Carolina in late 2026. The Bank is primarily engaged in the business of accepting demand deposits and savings deposits insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the “FDIC”), and providing commercial, consumer and mortgage loans to the general public. Unless the context requires otherwise, references to the “Company,” “we,” “us,” “our,” or similar references mean Southern First Bancshares, Inc. and its subsidiaries. Our Competitive Strengths We believe that the following business strengths have been instrumental to the success of our core operations. We believe these attributes will enable us to continue profitable growth, while remaining fundamentally sound and driving value to our shareholders. Simple and Efficient ClientFIRST Model. We operate our Bank using a simple and efficient style of banking that is focused on providing core banking products and services to our clients through a team of talented and experienced bankers. We refer to this model as “ClientFIRST” and it is structured to deliver superior client service via “relationship teams,” which provide each client with a specific banker contact and a consistent support team responsible for all of the client’s banking needs. We believe this model results in a consistent and superior level of professional service that provides us with a distinct competitive advantage by enabling us to build and maintain long-term relationships with desirable clients, enhancing the quality and stability of our funding and lending operations and positioning us to take advantage of future growth opportunities in our existing markets. We also believe that this client focused culture has led to our successful expansion into new markets in the past, and will enable us to be successful if we seek to expand into new markets in the future. Our ClientFIRST model focuses on achieving cost efficiencies by diligently managing the growth of our number of employees and banking offices. We believe that the identification of talented bankers will drive our growth strategy, as opposed to a more general desire to enter a specific geography or market. This strategy translates into a smaller number of brick-and-mortar offices relative to our size and compared to peer banks, but larger overall deposit balances in our offices as compared to peers. As a result, our offices average approximately $263.7 million in total deposits. We believe this style of banking allows us to deliver exceptional client service, while achieving lower efficiency ratios relative to certain of our local competitors, as evidenced by our 64.0% efficiency ratio for the year ended December 31, 2025. We continue to make significant investments in our IT systems and technology offerings to our clients that we believe will continue to drive low-cost deposit growth. We believe that our current mobile banking, on-line banking and cash management offerings are industry-leading solutions amongst community banks, and we plan to continue to invest in the latest technology solutions to enable us to meet the evolving needs of our clients and maintain this competitive advantage over other community banks. Attractive South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia Markets. We have eight banking offices located in Greenville, Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, which are the three largest markets in South Carolina; three banking offices located in Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro, North Carolina, which are some of the largest markets in North Carolina; and one banking office located in Atlanta, Georgia, which is the largest market in Georgia.…