Allegiance Bancshares, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Allegiance Bank Shares third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker today, Courtney Theriault, Executive Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you to all who have joined our call today. This morning's earnings call will be led by Steve Retzlaff, CEO of the company, Ray Vitulli, President of the company and CEO of Allegiance Bank, Paul Egge, Executive Vice President and CFO, Ocon Aiken, Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer of the company and President of Allegiance Bank, and Shanna Cuzzle, Executive Vice President and General Counsel. Before we begin, I need to remind everyone that some of the remarks made today constitute forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. We intend all such statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Act. Also note that if we give guidance about future results, that guidance is only a reflection of management's beliefs at the time the statement is made, and such beliefs are subject to change. We disclaim any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements except as may be required by law. Please see the last page of the text in this morning's earnings release, which is available on our website at allegiancebank.com, for additional information about the risk factors associated with forward-looking statements. We also have provided an investor presentation on our website. Although it is not being used as a guide for today's comments, it is available for review at this time. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open the line and allow time for questions. I now turn the call over to our CEO, Steve Retzlaff.

Thank you, Courtney. Welcome, everyone, to our conference call, and we appreciate your attendance. As seen on our press release this morning, Allegiance has continued to provide very strong results in the third quarter. That income of $19.1 million, or 93 cents per diluted share, reflected continuation of the PPP loan forgiveness cycle and increased investments income as we prudently grew our securities portfolio due to an expanding liquidity position. Funded core loans grew slightly during the third quarter, which is the net effect of the funded portion of a very strong new loan production offset by continued higher-than-historic paid-off loans. Ray will provide additional color on the numbers, but I commend the efforts of our entire team for the front-end results, and I believe it reflects our growing brand and market position as the region's premier local community bank of significant scale. Our asset quality metrics reflect improvement with minimal charge-offs and an improved coverage ratio of reserves to non-performing assets. That said, the Houston MSA continues to steadily improve with modest job gains in recent months. Actually, excluding energy and related sectors, the broader local economy has rebounded from the pandemic at a pace more representative of national averages. Other strong initiatives, such as efforts towards energy transition leadership, the Port of Houston Improvement Projects, the Texas Medical Center, and others, remain shining stars for Houston's continued economic diversification and growth. Upon announcing their recent headquarters relocation to Houston, the CEO of Hewlett Packard stated, Houston is an attractive market for us to recruit and retain talent and a great place to do business. I could not agree with him more. Finally, our capital position is strong and combined with our liquidity provides us with a great position from which to grow core loans. Both in the field and centrally, we are working to improve productivity to grow and expand our capacity to handle even more growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Ray for a more detailed review of our operational results, followed by Paul, who will cover our financial results.