SHORE BANCSHARES INC

REPORT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM (PCAOB ID 173)

Stockholders and the Board of Directors

Shore Bancshares, Inc.

Easton, Maryland

Opinions on the Financial Statements and Internal Control over Financial Reporting

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheet of Shore Bancshares, Inc. (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2024, and the related consolidated statement of income, comprehensive income, changes in stockholders’ equity, and cash flows for the period ended December 31, 2024, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the "financial statements"). We also have audited the Company’s internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2024, based on criteria established in Internal Control – Integrated Framework: (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO).

In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2024, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the period ended December 31, 2024 in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America. Also in our opinion, the Company maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2024, based on criteria established in Internal Control – Integrated Framework: (2013) issued by COSO.

Basis for Opinions

The Company’s management is responsible for these financial statements, for maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting, and for its assessment of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting, included in the accompanying Management’s Annual Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s financial statements and an opinion on the Company’s internal control over financial reporting based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (“PCAOB”) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audits to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud, and whether effective internal control over financial reporting was maintained in all material respects.

Our audits of the financial statements included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. Our audit of internal control over financial reporting included obtaining an understanding of internal control over financial reporting, assessing the risk that a material weakness exists, and testing and evaluating the design and operating effectiveness of internal control based on the assessed risk. Our audits also included performing such other procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinions.

Definition and Limitations of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

A company’s internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A company’s internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that (1) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the company; (2) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and that receipts and expenditures of the company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of the company; and (3) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition of the company’s assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.

Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the Audit Committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Allowance for Credit Losses – Economic Imprecision Qualitative Factor

As described in Note 1 to the financial statements, the Company accounts for credit losses under ASC 326, Financial Instruments – Credit Losses. ASC 326 requires the measurement of expected lifetime credit losses for financial assets measured at amortized cost at the reporting date. As of December 31, 2024, the balance of the allowance for credit losses (“ACL”) on loans was $57.9 million.

The Company’s methodology for estimating the amount reported in the ACL includes an allowance assessed on a collective basis for pools of loans that share similar risk characteristics, which are evaluated collectively using a cash flow approach which includes loan-level cash flow projections and pool-level assumptions and incorporates a reasonable and supportable forecast. Management’s estimate of the ACL on loans that are collectively evaluated also includes a qualitative assessment of available information relevant to assessing collectability that is not captured in the quantitative loss estimation process. Qualitative factors considered by management include concentrations of loans to specific industry segments; the volume and severity of delinquencies and adversely classified loan balances and the value of underlying collateral, and the probability of the near-term recession and its impacts on estimated losses that is captured through an economic imprecision factor. This evaluation is inherently subjective, as it requires estimates that are susceptible to significant revision as more information becomes available.

We identified auditing the economic imprecision qualitative factor of the ACL as a critical audit matter because the methodology to determine the estimate of credit losses uses subjective judgments by management and is subject to material variability. Performing audit procedures to evaluate the economic imprecision qualitative factor involved a high degree of auditor judgment, subjectivity and required significant effort, including the need to involve more experienced audit personnel.

The primary procedures we performed to address this critical audit matter included:

•Testing the effectiveness of controls over the evaluation of the qualitative factor assessments, particularly the economic imprecision factor, used in the ACL on collectively evaluated loans, including controls addressing:

◦Methodology and accounting policies related to the qualitative factors

◦Data inputs, calculations, and judgments used to determine the qualitative factors

◦Management’s output review of the ACL inclusive of qualitative factors

•Substantively testing management’s process, including evaluating their judgments and assumptions, for developing the economic imprecision qualitative factor of the ACL which is applied to loans which are collectively evaluated, which included:

◦Evaluation of the reasonableness of the Company’s accounting policies, judgments, and elections related to the economic imprecision qualitative factor

◦Testing the accuracy of key inputs and calculations used to determine the economic imprecision qualitative factor

◦Evaluation of the reasonableness of management’s judgments and assumptions related to the economic imprecision qualitative factor to determine if it is calculated in conformity with management’s policies and was consistently applied period over period.

/s/Crowe LLP

We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2024.

Livingston, New Jersey

March 10, 2025