CrossFirst Bankshares, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to CFB third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal conference specialists by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation or opportunity to ask questions, please note that this event is being recorded. I'd like to turn the call over to Ms. Heather Worley. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Cross First Bank Shares third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I'm Heather Worley, Director of Investor Relations. Before we begin, please be aware this call will include forward-looking statements, including statements about our business plans, the acquisition of Central, and our future financial performance. These comments are based on our current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Our forward-looking statements are as of the date of this call. We do not assume any obligation to update or revise them except as required by law. Statements made on this call should be considered together with the risk factors identified in today's earnings release and our other filings with the SEC. We may refer to adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release. These non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to substitute for or superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. This presentation will include remarks regarding the third quarter financial results from Mike Maddox, President and CEO of Cross First Bank Shares, Randy Rapp, President of Cross First Bank, and Ben Klaus, CFO of Cross First Bank Shares. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, our operator, Nick, will facilitate a Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mike, who will begin on slide four of the presentation. Mike?

Thank you, Heather. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we discuss Cross First's third quarter operating results. Before we dive into the details from the third quarter, I'd like to share a historical milestone with all of you. On October 1st, we celebrated our 15th anniversary as a company. The growth of our organization in the past 15 years is nothing short of remarkable. What started as a de novo bank in 2007 with $15 million in assets has grown to over $5.8 billion in assets with nine full service locations across Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and we are looking forward to adding Colorado and New Mexico to our footprint. As I reflect on the first 15 years, I see a dynamic group of talented individuals coming together every day to deliver extraordinary service and make a difference in the lives of our clients, one another, and in the communities where we live and work. Simply put, this is and will be the legacy of our organizations. I want to thank and congratulate our founding shareholders and board members who had the courage to invest in a startup bank 15 years ago. We work hard every day to make you proud and continue our legacy of entrepreneurship and extraordinary service. People are our most important asset. And while competition for talent continues to remain a top challenge for all businesses, we must stay keenly focused on culture, strengths, engagement and performance to recruit and retain the best talent in our industry. From new training and professional development opportunities, expanded awards and recognition programs, and a clear line of sight regarding career advancement, we reward people for doing the right things for our team, our clients and our shareholders. As we announced last quarter, We promoted Randy Rapp as president of the bank in July. He has been instrumental in enhancing our leadership team and positioning our company for future growth. He will speak shortly about some of the changes during his comments. Turning to our financial performance, we reported $17.3 million in net income, and our team produced $149 million of net loan growth during the quarter, which is an annualized rate of over 13%. While a level of uncertainty remains in the economy, we are optimistic that we will see continued loan growth through the remainder of 2022, although the growth could slow from the pace that we have seen so far this year. We are highly focused on credit quality, which is key to sustainable results and earnings. We will not compromise quality for growth. We've made improvement in our credit quality with our non-performing assets down to 31 basis points. The team is closely monitoring the impacts of rising rates and a changing economy. Our goal is to take a balanced approach as we monitor risk and build long-term value for our shareholders. With another quarter of solid earnings, we maintained our strong capital position while investing for our future. We have added to our stock buyback initiative and invested in technology and talent. We are optimistic that Central Bank will become a part of Cross First Bank with a transaction close in the fourth quarter. We are excited about what this merger will bring to serve the business and professional banking needs of their clients and the expanded mortgage and SBA capabilities that will be scaled across all of our markets. We will work to become extraordinary together. After closing, it will be business as usual for their clients while we work to integrate systems. This combination will advance our market expansion, bring experienced leaders to our team, accelerate our growth strategy, and enhance and add shareholder value. It will be immediately accretive and puts a portion of our excess capital to work. As we focus on long-term sustainable growth, I am proud to highlight our second annual Cross First Impact Report. In our second annual report, which covers calendar year 2021, we share an update on the progress we are making across numerous benchmarks through the ESG lens, diversity, inclusion, employee satisfaction, and philanthropic support. Last year, the ESG oversight responsibility of our board of directors we established a management-level ESG committee to develop, implement, and oversee the foundation of our sustainability and ESG program. In a rapidly changing and complex world, we are committed to making a positive impact. 2022 has been a year of acceleration for Cross First. We were again recognized by the Kansas City Business Journal as the best place to work. This type of independent acknowledgement is based on employee surveys and confirms what those of us at Cross First already knew. Our culture and the company we are building is truly special and unique. As we look to 2023, our focus will shift to optimizing the investments we have made in 2022. This will range from leveraging our new digital banking platform to serve our personal and business clients, to expand the reach of our newly formed specialized industry groups to scale the investments we have made in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. I will do all I can to make sure our team has the right tools and the right resources in place to succeed. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our president of Cross First Bank, Randy Rapp.