Equity Bancshares, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the third quarter 2020 Equity Bancshares, Inc. earnings conference call. At this time, all participant lines 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 then 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star then 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host, Chris Navratil, please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Equity Bank Shares conference call, which will include discussion and presentation of our third quarter 2020 results. Presentation slides to accompany our call are available via PDF for download at investor.equitybank.com by clicking the presentation tab. You may also click the event icon for today's call posted at investor.equitybank.com to view the webcast player. If you are viewing this call on our webcast player, please note that slides will not automatically advance. Please reference slide one including important information regarding forward-looking statements. From time to time, we may make forward-looking statements within today's call and actual results may vary. Following the presentation, we will allow time for questions and further discussion. Thank you all for joining us. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Brad Elliott.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning. Thank you for joining our call and your interest in equity bank shares. Joining me is Eric Newell, our CFO, Greg Kossover, our Chief Operating Officer, and our President, Craig Anderson. Despite the disruption and uncertainty of COVID-19, I'm excited with how the equity bank team has been able to achieve. Our company has accomplished many of our 2020 objectives while dealing with the disruption of the weird operating world we currently face. We continue to protect and support our team members on the front lines as they serve our customers and their communities. I can't remember a time that our capital has been better positioned To take advantage of opportunities that might come our way. We are poised for organic growth and will keep looking for opportunistic banks that need merger partners. We intend to responsibly continue our share repurchase program and remain focused on key strategic initiatives that we must accomplish to become high-performing banks. Thank you for joining us today. In our third quarter, we finished raising offensive capital totaling $75 million, which will allow us to take advantage of opportunities I previously mentioned. We successfully completed our joint regulatory exam with the Federal Reserve and the state of Kansas in the third quarter. Our tangible book value has grown 14% since the end of 2019, are $2.97 per share. We completed our 2019 stock repurchase program in September, repurchasing 383,000 shares, all of which were accreted to tangible book value and earnings. In addition, the board approved a second repurchase program totaling $16 million to start in the fourth quarter of 2020, subject to customary regulatory review. At the start of the pandemic, our equity teams took a trusted advisor approach with our customers to preserve cash. We did this very early in the process. It did result in 26% of our loans being on deferral at June 30th. But it helped our customers set aside much needed cash reserves for the current period, but also for the re-ramping period of this pandemic. As the 90-day deferrals expired in the third quarter, we remained focused to assure our customers had what they needed to operate. And when looking at the deferral, We ensured that those that needed an additional deferral were still showing the impact from the pandemic. On September 15th, we reported our progress, with only 11% of our loans still on deferral at that date. As expected, at the end of the third quarter, we had approximately 1% of our loans still remaining on deferral. Through this period, our customers' cash position has increased, and in some cases, the amount of the cash on hand is the highest they have ever experienced. By taking the approach we did early in the process, we feel our customers are now positioned to be able to survive and possibly thrive in the recovery from this pandemic. Over the last several months, Craig Anderson and I visited our region regularly and met with local customers. I'm excited to see our customers adapting to the change environment and how many are operating at levels superior to the start of the COVID-19 disruption. I am pleased the equity team continues to be steadfast partners to our customers and communities. I thank our bankers, for their commitment and approach to helping our local communities. As a community bank, we do what it takes to help each community succeed. Eric, why don't you take us through the details of the quarter?