The Company may grant stock options and restricted stock awards under its stock-based compensation plans to certain officers, employees, and directors. These plans are administered by a committee of the Board of Directors, and at June 30, 2025, approximately 0.5 million shares were available for grant under these stock-based compensation plans.

A Black-Scholes model is utilized to estimate the fair value of stock option grants, while the market price of the Company’s stock at the date of grant is used to estimate the fair value of restricted stock awards. The weighted average assumptions used in the Black-Scholes model for valuing stock option grants for the six months ended June 30, 2024 were as follows. There were no stock options granted for the six months ended June 30, 2025.


Stock Options	Option Shares Outstanding	Weighted Average Exercise Price		Weighted Average Remaining Life (Years)	Aggregate Intrinsic Value (in thousands)
Outstanding - December 31, 2024	1,162,229	$	69.16
Granted	—	—
Exercise of stock options *	(110,545)	52.89
Forfeited	(14,800)	80.23
Outstanding - June 30, 2025	1,036,884	$	70.73	5.1	$	54,692
Exercisable - June 30, 2025	796,213	$	68.51	4.5	$	43,770

* The terms of the stock option agreements permit having a number of shares of stock withheld, the fair market value of which as of the date of exercise is sufficient to satisfy the exercise price and/or tax withholding requirements. For the six months ended June 30, 2025, 61,162 such shares were withheld by the Company.

Intrinsic value represents the amount by which the fair market value of the underlying stock exceeds the exercise price of the stock options. The intrinsic value of options exercised for the six months ended June 30, 2025 and 2024 was approximately $7.1 million and $1.5 million, respectively.

* The terms of the restricted stock agreements permit the surrender of shares to the Company upon vesting in order to satisfy applicable withholding at the minimum statutory withholding rate, and accordingly 1,362 shares were surrendered for the six months ended June 30, 2025.

The Company recognized approximately $2.9 million of stock-based compensation expense (included in personnel on the consolidated statements of income) for the six months ended June 30, 2025 and for the comparable period in 2024, associated with its common stock awards granted to officers and employees. In addition, for the six months ended June 30, 2025, the Company recognized approximately $0.7 million of director expense (included in other noninterest expense on the consolidated statements of income) for restricted stock grants totaling 5,656 shares with immediate vesting to directors, while for the six months ended June 30, 2024, the Company recognized approximately $0.7 million of director expense for restricted stock grants totaling 8,764 shares with immediate vesting to directors, in each case representing the annual stock retainer fee paid to external board members. As of June 30, 2025, there was approximately $13.2 million of unrecognized compensation cost related to equity award grants, which is expected to be recognized over the remaining vesting period of approximately three years. The Company recognized a tax benefit of approximately $1.3 million and $0.2 million for the six months ended June 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively, for the tax impact of stock option exercises and vesting of restricted stock.